‘Knee’ Surgery

Noted author Michael Herr (“Dispatches,” the just-out “Walter Winchell”) has signed on to rewrite “Wounded Knee,” which producer Christopher Mankiewicz at one time hoped to have in theaters by Dec. 29. That’s the 100th anniversary of the infamous confrontation between the 7th U.S. Cavalry and Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, which left 153 Indians dead, many of them women and children. But the WGA strike and other circumstances intervened, and Mankiewicz tells us he’ll now be happy to be in production by that date.

Tab Murphy (who co-wrote “Gorillas in the Mist”) wrote the first script, telling dual stories: the 1973 occupation of the historic battlefield by American Indian Movement militants, who were under siege by government troops for 71 days; and a risky airlift of supplies to the stranded activists by a bunch of “average white guys” from Chicago.

Mankiewicz calls Murphy’s draft “a first-rate action adventure script” that needs a more serious, socially conscious tone--Herr’s task. “We’re trying to use the overall structure of Murphy’s script but emphasize the Indians’ story . . . re-balancing to the Indian point of view. It’s a drama of a culture trying to survive and maintain its identity, a struggle that continues today.”

The Warner Bros. feature, one of a number of films in development focusing on American Indian culture, is not related to author Dee Brown’s “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” a project that Marlon Brando and others have tried unsuccessfully to turn into a film over the years.