SHERIFF'S STAR
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| Mac the Law Lady. |
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Once Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn became the fresh cops for the new True Detective season (changing from Southern to West Coast noir, still owing everything to Elmore Leonard’s Justified), the hunt began for Ani Bezzerides, the tough, no-nonsense Monterey sheriff. Malin Aksrman, Jamie Alexander, Jessica Biel, Oona Chaplin, Rosario Dawson, Kelly Reilly, Brit Marling all read for creator Nic Pizzolatto. And with their recent outstanding cops counting for or against them, so did Michelle Forbes, from The Killing (written by Pizzolatto), and Elisabeth Moss, who made Top of the Lake for Jane Campion. And the star goes to… Rachel McAdams.
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BOLDEN OLDIE
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Gary Carr as another jazz man, Jack Ross, in Downton Abbey.
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“Dad, you ever going to finish this?” Dan Pritzker’s kids on the seven years between the start and end (?) of his biopic of Charles Joseph ‘Buddy’ Bolden (1877-1931), the New Orleans cornet player, who Pritzker says invented jazz ... before going mad. Shooting started with Anthony Mackie as Buddy. His career has since soared (The Hurt Locker, Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and it was impossible for him to pick up where he was forced to leave off in 2007. The new Bolden is Gary Carr from Downton Abbey. And the $30m (and rising) budget comes from Pritzker. No sweat. He’s the billionaire son of Hyatt Hotels magnate Jay Pritzer and forever on the Forbes list of 400 Richest Americans.
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NEARLY STAN & SYD ... NEARLY RACHEL
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While Stan Laurel concentrated (as usual) on the gags, based on one of his father’s old music-hall sketches, the 1926 Duck Soup producer Hal Roach suddenly dropped his regular player, the Cockney Syd Crossley, and made a certain Oliver Norvell Hardy the other hobo. And a star team was born. Kinda ... They made another ten shorts together - not exactly ensemble – before director Leo McCarey saw the light and the screen’s most famous double act really started in The Second Hundred Years. And continued during 1927-1950. Syd did OK - 116 films during 1925-1942, in the UK and US.
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“My daughter once said: Are you telling me that Brad Pitt could have been my father?” Yes, well Lisa Whelchel was once in the loop for Friends, fame and famous lovers. As if there could be another Rachel ... ”I said to my husband: This is the funniest script I’ve ever read and this is going to be a huge hit.” But Lisa was a devout Christian, and, well, “it was all about sex.” But hadn’t her previous series been called The Facts of Life ... Her Facts co-star Nancy McKeon was seen for ... as if there could be another ... Monica.
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WE'RE NO SUPERHEROES
Seeing pix of the newly super-ripped Jake Gyllenbhall in Southpaw, I just knew he’d be chased to join the current superhero deluge faster than Steve R McQueen. Steve is just aching to super up. Not Jake. He rejected any idea of him replacing the busy Tom Hardy among the supervillains of DC’s Suicide Squad, Also refusing all his spandex offers is Mad Man Jon Hamm. Because of the sequels… “At least two more that you haven’t read and you’ve no idea what they are going to be,” he told UK’s Radio Times, “and all the crossovers… For me to sign on now to do a superhero movie would mean I’d be working until I’m 50 as that particular superhero. A lot of work at one thing which is not necessarily the reason I got into the business - which is to do many things.”
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KNOCK! KNOCK!
We’re back in 1935 ... when Robert Young dropped out of Love on the Run. Therefore it was Franchot Tone who played Barnabus Pells and told the first (?) knock-knock joke in movies. Wince if you must, but I love it ...
"Knock-knock, Who's there? Machiavelli. Macchiavelli who? Machiavelli good soup for $10!" Owch, sounds like a Chico Marx reject.
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WELCOME to a unique directory of what you never saw on-screen. The films the stars did NOT make. The movies that never were.
The most definitive collation of casting stories ...
Check up on all the films - of yesterday, today and tomorrow - that your favourite stars never made ... A cast of thousands - well, some 6,053 stars to click on ... More than 40 years in the making!! And 1.5 million words of spirited text.
The ultimate in movie trivia ... Better! Exactly the kind of history that Hollywood deserves. Back to front. Upside-down. Inside out. Full of flashbacks, close-ups, tracking shots (and, alas some badly edited sequences - sorry about that!) forming a fascinating, new and often bizarre flip-side perspective on your treasured movies ... and stars.
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Albert of Arabia. When Brando said no, Albert Finney said Maybe. And shot a four-day, test as TE Lawrence (costing £100,000). Everyone said: Yes! Albie said: No, thank you.
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After lavish tests, producer David O Selznick couldn’t decide if Shirley Temple was right for Meg in 1949’s Little Women. So he sold out the whole deal to MGM - which preferred Janet Leigh to Shirley.
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“What’s the role?” said Peter Sellers. “All of them!” said Stanley Kubrick. Peter The Great settled for four. Dr Strangelove, of course, the US President and the RAF officer. And then, not wanting to be a freak show, he - er - injured his ankle and could not be USAF Major ‘King’ Kong riding the H-bomb.
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What Tom Selleck’s Indiana Jones would have looked like - from his 158th Magnum episode called ... Legend of the Lost Art, in 1988. An Indy parody complete with hat, whip, booby traps and a McGuffin that everyone was after.
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WHAT IS GOING ON?
You will find some of our pages have muddling changes of typefaces, colours, spacesand some wordssqueezedtogether. Extremely sorry! As Valmont put it: "It's beyond my control."
This follows improving security. Long story. All (well, most) will be corrected as/when possible over the next months. (This is a one-man band!) Meantime, I trust it will not spoil your pleasure too much.
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| We must never forget ... |
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