“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.” Be it telling tall tales, fables, or anecdotes, American humorist Mark Twain was a master. But what formed his timeless fiction? Life experience or vivid imagination?
Even success hasn’t made Samuel Clemens (Oscar nominee, Emmy and Golden Globe-winner James Garner, Breathing Leasons) a happy man. Instead of devoting his talent to “serious matters” he’s wasted them on yarns — as Mark Twain, a mere humorist. Now, asked to speak to Bryn Mawr’s graduating class of 1891, he’s filled with dread. His daughter Susy is a student and he hopes to make her proud, and not lend credence to his reputation among the elite as a long-winded buffoon. His wife Livy (Golden Globe-winner Jill Eikenberry, L.A. Law) has enough faith in him for the both of them — as a loving husband, a devoted father, and an extraordinary writer.
He needn’t have worried. In front of an enraptured crowd, the masterful storyteller unfolds a masterful story indeed. It’s the tale of a polite greenhorn (Robin Dunne, The Circle, as a young Sam) from the East initiated into the rough-and-tumble society of the raw Western frontier. It’s the life-affirming journey of an awestruck tenderfoot enriched by the people he meets and the stories they have to tell. It’s the epic adventure of achieving a dream, and realizing a purpose. Sifting through “passions, obsessions, pretensions, failures, and successes,” he relates the heart-warming, thrilling, and “somewhat truish” story of how a man named Samuel Clemens became known to the world as Mark Twain. Through his eyes, history truly comes to life as never before.
Featuring an all-star cast including Emmy-nominee Adam Arkin (Northern Exposure), Oscar and Golden Globe-nominee Eric Roberts (The Odyssey), Charles Martin Smith (P.T. Barnum), and Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe-nominee Ned Beatty (Gulliver's Travels), it reminds you how enchanting the past can be if you’re traveling with the right writer.