Papa

During a 1931 fishing trip on his boat, the Pilar, Hemmingway uses a Thompson submachine gun to fend off sharks intent on scavenging his catch - a 500-pound Tuna - before he can hoist it onto the boat. He ends up shooting himself in both legs trying to sink a man-size mako.

At a 1937 screening of the film Spanish Earth, for which Hemmingway cowrote the narration, he comes to blows with the narrator, Orson Welles, because Welles wants to change some of the lines. After throwing chairs and punches in front of the crowd, the two reconcile over a bottle of whiskey.

Hemingway establishes the "crook factory" in Key West, a clandestine outfit whose mission is to spy on pro-Franco and pro-Hitler agents in Cuba. The operation, which at one point consists of six full-time operatives and 20 other agents, is disbanded by the FBI less than a year after it is formed.

After outfitting the Pilar (his boat) with extra fuel tanks, grenades, and high-caliber machine guns, Hemmingway and a few buddies set out to hung Nazi U-boats in the Caribbean. It's mostly an excuse to drink to excess and employ large munitions, but that's why it's great to be Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway is driving with a few buddies on a road near Luxembourg in 1944 when he hears the ripping sound of aircraft fire. He yells, "Jump!" and his friends fly out of the car just as it's strafed down the middle by a machine gun. While they huddle in a ditch, Hemmingway uncorks his canteen to distribute premixed martinis.

Touring Uganda by plane in 1954, Hemingway crash-lands when his pilot nips a telegraph wire. Twenty-four hours later, his rescue plane also crashes. Hemingway's legend grows, but the man himself doesn't fare so well. A ruptured kidney, crushed vertebrae, brain damage, and chronic pain haunt him until his suicide in 1961.