Movie Idea: Joseph Paxton
A gardener who rose to fame quickly, Joseph Paxton was an English MP, and that was his 3rd most noteworthy achievement. He also invented the Cavendish banana (to say this variety is popular would be putting it mildly), and designed the Crystal Palace – a extraordinary building that housed the Great Exhibition in 1851. Yep, it was over 500m long and 139 wide, with a glass roof. It was built in just 8 months and at one stage they were installing 18,000 panes of glass per week. Absolutely extraordinary.
So, the movie idea… Frame it around this amazing gentleman, to highlight the incredible achievements of the British Empire of the that era. The Great Exhibition housed 13,000 exhibits from 44 countries, some of them very weird and marvellous indeed. This was where many people had their first experience of the flushing toilet… All sorts of other interesting things can take tangents. Think a Wes Anderson film.