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Medicine Man
Medicine Man
1992
PG13CC
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Deep in the forbidding Amazon rain forest, a brilliant but eccentric research scientist has discovered a cure for the plague of the 20th century. After living in the jungle for six years, Dr. Robert Campbell, a biochemist on the trail of a miracle, is on the verge of astonishing the world with a major medical breakthrough but he's lost the formula and must now rediscover the elusive serum. Making matters worse, the pharmaceutical corporation sponsoring his research has sent another biochemist. Dr. Rae Crane, to investigate the reclusive genius. A hard-headed female scientist is the last thing Campbell wants around his camp, but Crane refuses to leave and is soon caught up in the quest to find the rare antidote. In a race against time and the coming physical destruction of the jungle the pair embark on the most exciting adventure of their lives.
A pharmaceutical company sends biochemist Dr. Rae Crane (Bracco) into the Amazonian rainforest to locate researcher Robert Campbell (Connery), after his wife and research partner abandon him. Crane is bringing equipment and supplies, but Campbell is upset the research partner is not forthcoming. He tries to send Crane home, but she demurs, as she has been assigned to determine whether Campbell's research deserves continued funding.
Campbell has found a "cure for cancer", but attempts to synthesize the compound have failed. With supplies of the successful serum running low, Campbell isolates a derivative of a species of flower from which the formula can be synthesized and with Crane's help is determined to find its source. A logging company is building a road headed straight for the village, threatening to expose the native population to potentially lethal foreign pathogens, as has happened before. In fact, Campbell's wife left him because he could not forgive himself for the tragedy
A pharmaceutical company sends biochemist Dr. Rae Crane (Bracco) into the Amazonian rainforest to locate researcher Robert Campbell (Connery), after his wife and research partner abandon him. Crane is bringing equipment and supplies, but Campbell is upset the research partner is not forthcoming. He tries to send Crane home, but she demurs, as she has been assigned to determine whether Campbell's research deserves continued funding.
Campbell has found a "cure for cancer", but attempts to synthesize the compound have failed. With supplies of the successful serum running low, Campbell isolates a derivative of a species of flower from which the formula can be synthesized and with Crane's help is determined to find its source. A logging company is building a road headed straight for the village, threatening to expose the native population to potentially lethal foreign pathogens, as has happened before. In fact, Campbell's wife left him because he could not forgive himself for the tragedy
A small boy appears with malignant neoplasms and Campbell, Crane, the boy, and his father set out in search of Campbell's predecessor, a medicine man from whom Campbell once acquired his knowledge of flowers. Upon encountering Campbell's entourage, the medicine man flees in fear. Though he is reluctant to pursue the man further, Crane convinces him circumstances demand that he must. Campbell rescues Crane from a fall, then locates the medicine man, whom he is compelled to fight in order to heal the medicine man's wounded pride and gain further necessary information. Unfortunately, the medicine man reveals that the flowers have no "juju"—power to heal. Father and son agree to return another time. Back at the village, Crane initially refuses to allow Campbell to inoculate the boy with the last of the serum until more can be synthesized. But when the boy's condition worsens, she gives in and the boy is inoculated.
The next morning, the boy is better but the village is in tumult. The logging road is nearly finished. Campbell appeals to the company's workers to halt construction until he can conclude his research, but it refuses. In desperation and after new samples fail to contain the missing compound, Crane runs the chromatograph one more time and accidentally discovers that the source of the cure is not the flower but a species of rare ant indigenous
to the rainforest. Campbell demands the construction stop. A fight results and a bulldozer catches fire, destroying the village and the research station along with many acres of rainforest.
In biogeography, a species is defined as indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only natural process, with no human intervention.[1] The term is equivalent to native in less scientific usage. Every wild organism (as opposed to a domesticated organism) has its own natural range of distribution in which it is regarded as indigenous. Outside this native range, a species may be introduced by human activity; it is then referred to as an introduced species within the regions where it was anthropogenically introduced.[2]
The next morning, the boy is better but the village is in tumult. The logging road is nearly finished. Campbell appeals to the company's workers to halt construction until he can conclude his research, but it refuses. In desperation and after new samples fail to contain the missing compound, Crane runs the chromatograph one more time and accidentally discovers that the source of the cure is not the flower but a species of rare ant indigenous to the rainforest. Campbell demands the construction stop. A fight results and a bulldozer catches fire, destroying the village and the research station along with many acres of rainforest.
The next day, Crane promises to send Campbell new equipment and the research assistant he'd originally requested. She is about to return home when she meets the medicine man. He symbolically passes on his mantle to Campbell, and Crane accepts an invitation to continue working with him in exchange for recognition for co-discovering the source of the compound
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-08-18/business/fi-5787_1_medicine-man
Doctor Sues the Makers of 'Medicine Man' : Film: Creative Artists Agency and actor Sean Connery are named in the suit.
August 18, 1992|TERRY PRISTIN | TIMES STAFF WRITER
A doctor who claims to be the model for the "Medicine Man" depicted by Sean Connery in the recent movie of that name sued the actor and others connected with the film Monday, contending that they misappropriated the doctor's autobiographical story and misrepresented his work with Amazon Indians.
In their copyright infringement suit, the doctor, Wilburn H. Ferguson, and his co-plaintiff and backer, Phillip Lambro, allege that they had a series of meetings in 1988 at Creative Artists Agency, which then went ahead and packaged a movie telling a substantially similar tale but cut them out of the deal.
CAA represents both Connery, who also served as executive producer on the film, and screenwriter Tom Schulman, who was paid nearly $3 million for the "Medicine Man" screenplay. CAA declined comment, pending a review of the complaint.
Also named as a defendant, in addition to Connery, Schulman and CAA, was Walt Disney Co.'s Hollywood Pictures, which distributed "Medicine Man."
Ferguson, a Texas resident, and Lambro, who lives in Los Angeles, state in their complaint that they began developing a project they called "Tsanza" in 1973, based on the physician's "extensive jungle plant research which resulted in a cure for cancer."
The doctor, now 87, lived among Ecuadoran Amazon Indians in the 1930s but was never able to persuade the American Cancer Society and other members of what he describes as the "Cancer Establishment" to endorse the medicinal treatment he developed, his attorney, Monday U. Abengowe, said.
Abengowe said Monday that Lambro, an established composer and conductor, got to know Ferguson after learning about his research and became his backer in the hope that a book and movie would publicize the physician's controversial work.
Their contact with CAA began in 1987 after they mailed a copy of "Tsanza" and a screen synopsis and treatment to the agency, according to the complaint, which names an agent and two low-level CAA employees who allegedly had access to the material.
The lawyer estimated that Lambro spent 20 hours in meetings with CAA personnel. Abengowe provided a reporter with a copy of a letter from CAA employee Alison Claire-Genis to her uncle, a New York publisher, telling him that "Tsanza" "would make a fascinating book." Claire-Genis was described by CAA as a secretary who no longer works for the agency.
The complaint also contends that in 1990 Pamela Kellman, who worked for Lambro, submitted the same material to Carolco Pictures, a company partly owned at the time by Andrew G. Vajna. Vajna left Carolco to form Cinergi Productions, which produced "Medicine Man" as its first project.
Dede Lebovits, Cinergi's general counsel, said she had not seen the complaint and was therefore unable to comment.
WRITTEN 12/13/96, REVISED 9/7/08 |
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WRITTEN 12/13/96, REVISED 9/7/08 |
In biogeography, a species is defined as indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only natural process, with no human intervention.[1] The term is equivalent to native in less scientific usage. Every wild organism (as opposed to a domesticated organism) has its own natural range of distribution in which it is regarded as indigenous. Outside this native range, a species may be introduced by human activity; it is then referred to as an introduced species within the regions where it was anthropogenically introduced.[2]
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