NAKED CITY: BIO PIC PICK-A-BOX!
“The characters in this film are fictional and bear no resemblance to persons living or dead.” It’s a disclaimer that often appears at the end of movies as the credits roll. When it comes to a spate of recent bio pics maybe it would have been more honest to include it right at the start!
Take the recent Hollywood epic J. Edgar, about the kinky cross-dressing head of America’s FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. Some have suggested that Leonardo De Caprio was cast in the lead role only because Vin Diesel knocked back the part. Despite all the facial prosthetics that Holywood could summon De Caprio looked more like our own Christopher Pyne as the young J. Edgar and a bloated jellyfish as he got older.
Certainly Meryl Streep has done an admirable job of impersonating the wicked milk-snatching Maggie Thatcher but portrayals such as hers are few and far between. Whilst becoming a facsimile of the original person is not an essential for the bio pic, the movie-going public have the right to expect a reasonable approximation, even allowing for poetic licence and the actor’s own interpretation. When Mick Jagger was cast as the Irish outlaw Ned Kelly in the 1970 movie of the same name, many complained that he bore little psychical resemblance – even the beard was a shocker! His accent was all wrong and about the only time he looked the part was when he donned the full head armour. Similarly you have to ask who cast Dennis Hopper as the very cranky Frank Sinatra in the 2003 Australian made The Night We Called It A Day. Despite Hopper’s brave attempt to pull off the role, it was hard to believe he was Frank Sinatra and the movie was a dud at the box office.
Now comes the shattering news that Daniel Radcliffe, forever stereotyped as the likeable Harry Potter, is to play beat poet Allan Ginsberg in a movie entitled Kill Your Darlings, set in New York in 1944. Again it seems Vin Diesel has knocked back the part and you have to ask, when it comes to Hollywood, is anything sacred? No doubt former beatniks and old style bohemians throughout the world will greet Daniel’s casting with a ‘Howl’ of disgust! We have yet to learn of the supporting cast but surely Macaulay Culkin would make a great William Burroughs and Shrek would be a natural as Jack Kerouac. Yes, it has to be 3D animation, with a jazzy soundtrack from the crew from Glee and a cameo from Zsa Zsa Gabor. Thankfully the characters in thus movie will bear no resemblance to persons living or dead!
