I mean, it became a major book.

It's going to be a movie.

I believe it's about the most intelligent horse that ever lived.

The name of the horse is Jim Key.

The man who raised him was a slave.

But before I tell you that, let me just tell you how I got into this story.

So I'm a young guy in New England starting to make films, and I love the old bookshops.

Some of you may as well in those days.

You go into the bookshop and you could find stuff from the Civil War for 1/4 and on the corner.

They had these pamphlets because pamphlets was a major way of communicating at that time.

And I would sit there hour after hour on a cold day on needed bookstore, looking at these old pamphlets and buying them.

So I pick up a pamphlet about a horse called Beautiful Jim Key, the most intelligent horse that ever lived.

So now it's in the 19 nineties, a time after the bubble where I had lost pretty much all of my money and I'm looking for ways of making a living.

And, uh, I had this pamphlet and I went to a writer in Hollywood who, friend of mine knew, and she said, I'd like to tell that story.

I'm from Tennessee with the horses from and the guy who raised him.

So let's find out if this story Israel and we go to Tennessee and we find out that the story is real and I'm about to tell you that story.

It's a time before the Civil War, Shelbyville, Tennessee, and a young slave.

A boy.

Bill Key is being raised by John Key, who has also two sons, and John Key is a very kind man, and he raises Bill Key like he's one of his sons.

Educates him, gives him responsibility in the house, and when he sees that young Bilkey has a unique ability with horses, a kind of a horse sense, he elevates him to become the horse leader of nominally this plantation.

But of the surrounding area, he raised Bill with kindness and patience, just like his sons.

So now it's the Civil War.

Bilkey is a young man, and he decides to go into the civil war on the side of the South to help his brothers, who he protects all the way through the war and at the same time to get free slaves through the southern to northern wall that existed.

So he's helping slaves, and he's helping these boys survive the South against the North, And he's also acting like he's a spy for the North and he gets caught and he's being tried for treason.

But he's also a great cook.

I don't know how, so he starts cooking for the guide in charge and he says, Look, I can really play cards.

I am a master at cards and while he's engaged with these guys, the North, he begins playing cards with them, making a lot of money.

He becomes surprisingly wealthy by the end of the Civil War.

He's freed several 1000 slaves, and he's protected.

John Keyes sons and the war is over, and he walks back down to Tennessee and the places, of course, somewhat decimated.

And John Key has lost the plantation.

He buys the plantation back for John Key, so he has a home.

He then goes and sets up Ah, horse operation in Shelbyville, which becomes very famous beyond locally.

He sets up a race track, the hotel, a restaurant, a blacksmith shop and a horse hospital.

I mean, it's a major operation, and he is a major horsemen, and he loves racing.

Although he's not himself.

The guy rides on the horse, he's fascinated by it, and he wants to create the greatest racehorse that Tennessee had ever seen.

The time is 18 85 and he wants to breed an unbeatable race horse.

He's out of auction in Mississippi, in the Deep South, a black person in a world of white horse traders and up comes Loretta.

Loretta is being sold as a famous I think she was Egyptian horse who had came from a long lineage but have been destroyed by circuses.

She had lived in the circus all her life and really was down and out worth nothing.

And Bilkey bids 40 bucks and others in the room, laughing and look at that stupid black guy.

They didn't say black, uh, buying that horse, But he could look in her eyes and he could see something special.

He talks about this later in what I'm about to tell you.

He buys Loretta, and now he has to find a Hamilton who he can mate with Loretta to produce the greatest racy horse.

He contacts.

The owner of Tennessee Volunteer, the number one racing horse at that time, and they breed and they create Ah, horse baby, a colt that is a complete total mess.

Can't stand up.

Does it work?

Right?

Looks kind of goofy.

Looks like some horse, say his colleagues.

That should be shot taken out of its misery.

He doesn't do that.

He looks in the eyes of that horse, and what he sees is something intelligent.

And you already had spent his life training horses and being around horses with kindness and patience and intelligence as he was raised.

He believed in that for every century and being, and he takes this horse and he begins to work with this horse.

Jim Kate talkto him sleeps in the stable with Jim Key, turns out for the rest of his life and gym keys life.

This story is going to get unbelievable.

He trains him for three or four years, and he begins to see really signs of intelligence out of gym.

He finds it he can teach gym, fetch, lie down, play dead like a dog.

He also finds that Jim seems to be very interested in the other animals.

He comes over any sniffs them, is kind to them in a way that Bill feels is very unusual.

So when he's trained them in a number of these different skits, he takes him on the road with one of Bill's big money making products, Keystone Liniment Oil.

At that time, liniment oil and other oils was sold by people who went on the road.

Kind of circus is on the road, and Bill was very successful with Keystone, but about to become hugely more successful selling Keystone using Jim Key.

So he's on the road with the Keystone Liniment Oil.

And here is a quote from a newspaper about someone who saw Jim and Bill during this Keystone liniment tour.

Crowds gathered and Dr Key would slip Jim Key a piece of sugar and say, Now, Jim, use a powerful, smart horse.

I know, but what is your politics?

Is that Republican Jim took a look of disgust and shakes his head.

No.

Are you a prohibitionist?

No.

Are you a populist?

No, Are you a socialist?

No, The horse was unmoved.

Are you a Democrat?

The horses expression changes.

He snickered and made various noises.

The audience burst central after with this encouragement, Jim grassed a piece of chalk in his mouth and scrolls Jim on the blackboard.

Maids change from a cash register spelled the name of a man in the audience By selecting the letters from Iraq on the road, Jim does all kinds of tricks that people could not believe.

Now think about this.

This was the time when the horse was a part of the family, but people did not think of.

The horse is intelligent.

You kind of treated horses sort of like dumb animals.

Skittish, dumb.

They were like When you can't say cars, will you keep treat your car kind of the same way?

But it was kind of like that, everybody, Adam, But nobody thought of them like this horse was behaving.

And Jim becomes famous with Bill Keystone.

Lindemann takes off, but he also begins to perform in Negro exhibitions.

They called them At these exhibitions, people show up and Jim is in the front of the stage, and Bill is on the side, and he says to the audience things he says to the horse things and the horse does, Um, I'm gonna tell you some of those things in a minute.

But picture Now it's 18 97 and he's performing somewhere in the South and a great New York circus guy.

Albert Rogers, hears about Jim Key and Bilkey and goes down and tries to buy Jim Key.

10,000 books, 20,000 books.

Bill won't even consider it.

He sleeps with the horse every night, and he says, Of course I won't sell him.

So Albert says, Well, can we work together and form an act where you and Jim perform in front of audiences?

I think we can make a lot of money and they do.

And everywhere they perform, they are amazing it.

Imagine this.

He reads and spells using his mouth.

He can camped from 1 to 25 up to a dollar, really, and you can make change.

He can play the organ with his mouth.

Just a few notes to show that he understands the organ.

He can tell time if you ask him what is the time Now he moves the clock around to the proper time and he can use a phone.

He can actually pull the little numbers down on the old time telephones.

You believe all of this?

Well, here's one of the things that happened by the way they ended up make several $1,000,000 before the story.

I'm about to tell you, which is what happens in 19 0 for a critical moment in their career.

But everybody is talking about this horse front page news in newspapers around the country He's going to meet.

President McKinley, spent a few hours with him, and some Harvard guys get suspicious.

So a paper asked the Harvard guys to investigate and they do a real test.

They put Bill in the back of the room.

They see whether there's any signals between them, and they conclude the horse is for real.

He's a quote I love.

Uh, so this is about 19 3 while performing in Cincinnati is in the newspaper while performing in Cincinnati.

A soil towel by mistake was put in gym keys, trunk and Jim when he took it out through it on the floor and shook his head as if to say, I can't stand this fell was used to wipe Jim's mouth entry took a coin out of a glass of water, which people felt was impossible at the time.

This created great amusement among the audience and one lady, Mrs C.

Long bought gym six beautiful fringe towels on which he had sown his name.

And one of the things that's important about this is that Bill continues to treat Jim with his beautiful kindness and sweetness, and the American Humane Society, which exists at that time, takes notice.

George and sell the head of it, he says, Hey, can I connect with you?

And maybe we could get kids to really pay attention to treat animals and horses in a way that they've never been treated before.

And they start a relationship Beautiful Jim Key and the American Humane Society.

So now we come to the high point of the story, UH, 19 0 for the ST Louis World's Fair.

There is a building called the Gym Key Pavilion.

Why?

Because he'd be getting audiences of 10,000 night 15,000 night.

And at the world's fair, 22,000 people paid money to see Jim a night and one night Alison Longworth Roosevelt comes the daughter of the president, President Roosevelt, and she steps into the hole that everyone Oh, it's Allison and she goes right to the front and she sits down.

And it just so happens that the ST Louis school system has sent a bunch of sixth grade kids also in the front row to have a spelling bee competition against Jim Key.

And one of the words that comes up is Alison Longworth Roosevelt and Jim Key.

The horse spells Alison Longworth, Roosevelt as well as McKinley and wins the spelling competition.

Nothing.

He's better than these best of kids, but he's as fast.

So they conclude he has dispelling capability of 1/6 grade student.

It's national news.

It's major stuff.

He's bigger than any actor or athletes at the time.

Really.

He's in every newspaper he's booming.

This is song written about him.

There are all kinds of advertisers who want to do advertising with him, obviously, horse related things, but also Pullman car company.

The Great Railroad Car Company makes a special car for Jim and from Bill, who sleeps with him in that car and for his dog, Monk, So monkeys with Jim all the time and from the time they connect.

Every single performance also has Monk in it, and Jim is also kind of monk.

He bends over so Monk and jump up on his back and stuff like that.

It's just beautiful.

There's a play written about Jim Key, in which he plays a role and the American Humane Society begins to do amazing things.

It actually produces a button that honors Jim, and it produces a medal.

And two million Children signed this pledge.

The mercy pledge, The pledge says.

I promise to be kind to animals and toe all sentient beings.

And that was signed by two million kids.

There's a special ambulance corps for animals, which honors Jim.

He's very, very famous.

He dies in 1909 and he's got a beautiful cemetery stone at the place where Bill owned Land and Bill dies, also with Stone that honors beautiful Jim Key.

So what happened to this story?

My colleague writes the book Beautiful Jim Key.

It becomes a bestseller.

Well, because I collected this pamphlet when I was a kid.

I love that.

What serendipity is cause and, uh, is going to hopefully be a movie made because Morgan Freeman fell in love with this story and he said, Look, get the story and I'll play Jim Key.

Well, he's an old man.

I don't know how he's going to do that, but he wants to.

And Robert Rodat, who wrote Saving Private Ryan.

He wrote a script based on this story.

As you know, I love stories.

I'm always looking for stories, and I believe that every story has a reason for being collected that sometime in the future it's going to become a story that people like you could see and hopefully enjoy.

I know this is an incredible story.

Hard to believe, but we really check this out.

Miriam Revis, the writer and I went to Tennessee for weeks, asked a lot of questions, did a lot of research, found personal letters from people whose grand parents saw Jim and build, understood everything about Bill, including the house he lived in, and we could see the racetrack and the cemetery stones.

Listen, at least for me, you never know about serendipity.

It's amazing and everything you're doing, it appears to me, and still does I find something.