REVOLUTION HARDLY MAKES FOR MOVIES.

Byline: KIMIT MUSTON Local View

I'VE never understood why it only took one man to write most of the Declaration of Independence when today it takes five or six people to write a 90-minute movie.

Heck, by modern production standards the entire American Revolution was underproduced - not to mention no real marketing.

Did you know there was not a single ancillary contract signed? Look at the paintings! Do you see patriots drinking Coke, eating a Big Mac while sitting in a Mercedes? Not one.

Today the production would have been funded with the ancillaries, the distribution company would have shouldered the cost of prints and advertising, and the video rights would have been gravy, pure gravy.

Not that they even needed a big budget. Heck, they could have paid for the entire Revolutionary War with the cost of one Bruce Willis flick, minus his points of course.

Not that the lack of a budget was their only problem in founding a new nation.

OK, it was just a Revolutionary War, and the plot wasn't nearly as complicated as the ``Lord of the Rings'' trilogy, but remember 1776 was pre- CG - computer graphics I mean - and when George Washington wanted to cross the Delaware and attack the Hessian troops at Trenton on Christmas Day not only did he have to actually attack Trenton but he had to actually do it on Christmas Day.

The poor guy was shooting in sequence, which is horrendously expensive, and I won't even go into the union rates for a holiday shoot. And in New Jersey? Hey, try finding a local who knows how to load a Panaflex without getting his fingerprint on the lens.

Oh, it was difficult even coming up with a shooting script for the Revolutionary War. In the first draft they had all these expensive standing sets; Boston, Philadelphia, Lexington and Concord. It looked for awhile like they were going to have to shoot the American Revolution in Italy.

Luckily they had a producer who knew where his wallet was. ``Do we really need Philly and Boston? Just what is the difference, visually I mean? They both got bricks. They both got bells. Close up of a bell, we're in Boston. We paint a crack in it, we're in Philly. Trust me, the audience won't know the difference.''

And then there was all that dialogue, endless pages and pages of endless talking heads endlessly talking. Five minutes of that and the entire audience would have gone out for popcorn. At home.

And what are they talking about? Family massacres? Gigantic explosions? Kinky sex? I wish.

No, it was ideas. Ideas, for crying out loud. Big, fat, immobile ideas. How do you film something like that?

Sure, ``Give me liberty or give me death'' is a great line, and I can see our hero shouting it just before he stabs some Red Coat in the eye with a salad fork, but that gets followed by ``No taxation without representation.''

What the heck kind of a line is that? Ridiculous!

I mean, can you imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger saying something like that? Not in a million years, not the Terminator, baby.

Schwarzenegger might say ``Total Recall,'' but he wouldn't be caught dead saying something like ``when in the course of human events. ...''

And you know why? Because with his accent, the whole audience would be saying ``what the heck did he say?'' and they'd miss the entire next reel of the movie.

And the Minute Men? Give me a break. They're either ``Six-Second Men'' or they're out of the picture. Listen, if these people are the last, best hope of the world, they've got to look like they're at least moving on screen!

How can you build an action sequence when everybody walks everywhere? Even the horses. I did research. The fastest-moving thing in the entire American Revolution was the Continental Army the one time they all caught dysentery. And that is not an action sequence I want to see on the big screen.

Of course, if Hollywood had run the American Revolution the way they make their movies, our country probably would have opened on Memorial Day weekend, and by July 4, we would have been on our way to the pre-viewed table at Blockbuster. ``The United States of America! Thirteen young colonies seek freedom in a steamy tale of love, sex and deficit spending! Running time; 600 million minutes. Fifty percent off.''

Myself, I'd wait and tape it off HBO if I couldn't download it for free.