Darin Do

He was, in many ways, the link between the lounge generation and the rock ‘n’ roll years - a singer whose records sold to the kids whose parents also paid to see him in Vegas. He was already 22 when he had his first hit: ‘Splish Splash’, more a novelty item than a pop song. But he hit the big time the following year (1959) with two successive Number Ones: ‘Dream Lover’ and ‘Mack the Knife’, the latter based on (of all things) the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill Threepenny Opera.
He was, of course, Bobby Darin, who survived the sixties and psychedelia with a series of songs that were closer to Broadway than Woodstock (‘Clementine’, ‘Bill Bailey’, ‘Multiplication’...), but who died three years into the next decade, aged 37, of complications following open-heart surgery. In between, he did his fair share of movie roles, most notably winning a Best Supporting Actor nomination for 1963’s Captain Newman, MD.
We first reported rumours of a Darin biopic four years ago this issue, when producer Arthur Freedman was trying to set it up at Warners with a script by Frank Carcaterra, who has just had a hit with Sleepers. Probable director was Barry Levinson, who reportedly wanted Johnny Depp - then on a roll following Ed Wood - for the lead, with the possibility of Drew Barrymore playing Sandra Dee, who was Darin’s wife.
That was then, this is now. Freedman is still with the project, as he has been for the past 12 years. But the title role is now being circled by Kevin Spacey, who bears a striking resemblance to Darin, but who has never, to my knowledge, taken a singing role before. No word yet on who will be saying “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee”. And anyway, Spacey has first to do Play it Forward, in which he co-stars with Sixth Sense discovery Haley Joel Osment. But it ought to be worth waiting for: if anyone can break the jinx on rock ‘n’ roll biopics, surely Spacey can.

Shipping In, Shipping Out

It wasn’t the most obvious movie in the world: the semi-mystical story of a strange-looking loner living in the mists and snows of Newfoundland. But Annie Proulx’s novel The Shipping News was a massive bestseller, and an awful lot of good people have been mentioned in connection with the big-screen adaptation. Trouble is, no sooner than they were mentioned than they all dropped out again.
First in and out were the husband-and-wife team of John Travolta and Kelly Preston; then there was Meg Ryan. On the directorial front, top names like Fred Schepisi and Lasse Hallstrom have shipped in and shipped out again. And now, just when it all looked like coming together again under Billy Bob Thornton - who would not only have played the lead role but directed the movie as well - he, too, has ankled. Which leaves The Shipping News just where it was when we first mentioned it here a couple of years ago.
Thornton, meanwhile, may direct Ben Affleck in Miramax’s The Cinderella Man. And Travolta - who recently wrapped Numbers with Nora Ephron (the director who steered him very successfully through Michael) - looks like making Steinbeck’s Point of View, playing the title role of a man who has to face up to his own death. The project could start in the next couple of months, and the only reason no director is yet attached is because Travolta has, as usual, approval in this department.

Cruise Control

W ith an Oscar nomination under his belt (for Magnolia) and the lead role in what seems almost guaranteed to be one of this summer’s biggest movies (Mission: Impossible 2), Tom Cruise might play the title role in Columbia’s Fertig before the oft-times postponed Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report finally goes in front of the cameras.
Fertig is about an American GI who became a hero during WWII in the Pacific and has a screenplay by British playwright William Nicholson, who recently followed up his highly personal directorial debut Firelight with a shared credit on a script of a very different kind: the Ridley Scott epic Gladiator. No director is yet attached.

Hannibal Feeling Moore-ish

Dino De Laurentiis is not one to throw in the towel. The legendary 80-year-old producer, who has over 400 films to his credit (the most recent of which, U-571, is featured on the pages immediately preceding ‘Hollywood Notes’), nabbed the screen rights to Hannibal, novelist Thomas Harris’ sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, some time ago. And he had it all nicely set up at Universal and MGM (who would split production costs and rights), with the two key cast members of the original lined up to reprise their roles as Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling. Then Jodie Foster - who, of course, played FBI agent Starling to Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal in the original - decided that the way Harris had written Starling in the sequel wasn’t the way she saw the character and took herself elsewhere. Hopkins remained on board, but without a star to play Starling, all the high-power behind-the-camera talent - including writer Steve Zaillian and director Ridley Scott - wouldn’t be enough to make the numbers look right, not with Hopkins earning a reported $10 million for his participation and De Laurentiis having paid Harris $9 million for the rights. Fortunately, however, the equations began to work again when Julianne Moore - currently hot as a result of both Magnolia (in which she is magnificent) and The End of the Affair (for which she has a Best Actress nomination) - stepped into Foster’s shoes. No precise start-date has yet been set, but studio sources suggest Hannibal could be rolling by this summer.