I believe that the only way to do Richard III justice is to produce it as a western, using the famous gunfight at the OK Corral as the setting. Actions-packed movies are underlined with the same themes that I find in Shakespeare's Richard III: Deceit, double-crossing, power, lust, and of course, murder. In fact, most historical conflicts have more than one of the elements that I have just mentioned. When we weave the right historical moment into Richard III, we will get a Hollywood phenomena. Richard should be portrayed close to John Henry Holliday, who was more known as Doc Holliday. In Shakespeare's story, Richard is physically deformed. Doc Holliday was also physically deformed but he had TB. Richard appears to have no real friends, as did Doc. They both appeared to be cold-blooded killers and feared by many, even shunned by family.
             The opening scene of the film would be in the Oriental Saloon. Richard would be sitting at a poker table alone, throwing back shots of Kentucky whiskey as he speaks his first silique: "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious by this son of York/And all the clouds that loured upon our house/In the deep bosom of the ocean buried/Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths/our bruised arms hung up for monuments/ our stern alarums changed to merry meetings/ our dreadful marches to delightful measures" (lines 1-8, 1.1).
             Then we see Richard as he stands up bring a handkerchief to his mouth, thus implying that his deformity in this version is Tuberculosis. He lays his money on the bar and begins to talk to the bartender: "But I, am not shaped for sportive tricks/Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass/I that am rudely stamped and want love's majesty/ to strut before a wanton ambling nymph/cheated of feature by dissembling nature/ deformed, unfinished, sent before my time/Into this breathing world scarce half made up/ and that so lamely and unfashionable/that dogs bark at me as I halt by t...