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Vignettes
DAMON
OFFERED ...IDENTITY
Matt Damon has been offered The Bourne Identity, Universal’s adaptation
of the Robert Ludlum bestseller, that will be directed by Doug Liman.
While Damon had been considering a number of possible projects, including
the DreamWorks film The Ninth Man, sources said there is a strong likelihood
that he will commit to the film and that it will begin production in the
fall.
In the novel, his character washes up on an island near death from gunshot
wounds, with no recollection of what happened, or even who he is. The
man finds himself being hunted by a variety of bad guys, and also discovers
he’s remarkably efficient at killing them. Not knowing whether he
is a good guy or a bad one, he struggles to find his identity before the
assassins find their mark.
The adaptation has been one of the highest-profile projects in the Universal
arsenal, especially since Liman (Go) signed on. The project was strongly
considered by Brad Pitt, but availability became a problem when he committed
to the Tony Scott-directed Spy Game for Universal and Beacon.
Damon is working with director Jim Sheridan on an outline to see if they
might team on a Fox 2000 adaptation of I Know This Much Is True, the best-selling
Wally Lamb novel, about a painter who cares for his dysfunctional and
destructive twin. Damon stars in director Robert Redford’s The Legend
Of Bagger Vance, which is set for an August 4 release via DreamWorks.
DOROTHY’S
RUBY SLIPPERS FETCH $666,000
A pair of Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from the 1939 film The Wizard
Of Oz sold for a whopping $666,000 at an auction of Hollywood memorabilia,
but the Cowardly Lion costume, expected to command a comparable price,
failed to sell. The slippers, red satin size 6B shoes, covered in red
sequins, and one of only four pairs known to exist, were bought by Dave
Elkouby, 36, of Los Angeles. He described himself as a private collector
who has a memorabilia shop in Hollywood. “They’re the ultimate
piece in any form for movie memorabilia,” Elkouby said. He added
that he was working on opening a museum in Hollywood, where the shoes
would go on display. The slippers were won by Roberta Bauman in 1940 in
a contest staged by MGM, which made The Wizard Of Oz. She sold them in
1988 for $150,000, setting an auction record for Hollywood memorabilia
that has been eclipsed many times since. The current mark is held by the
1939 Gone With the Wind Best Picture Oscar, for which pop star Michael
Jackson shelled out $1,542,500 a year ago at Sotheby’s.
Another artefact from the Oz legend, the Cowardly Lion’s costume
worn by Bert Lahr, failed to sell when bids topped out at $550,000. But
Lahr’s paw-style shoe went for $25,850, including commission for
the auction house, Christie’s East. Christie’s East had said
it expected each costume to fetch “in the high six figures,”
so while the slippers commanded one of the top prices ever paid for at
auction for Hollywood memorabilia, they did not truly meet expectations.
The second-highest price was the $402,000 an anonymous telephone bidder
paid for the yellow and black 1937 Phantom III Rolls-Royce from the 1964
James Bond film, Goldfinger, more than double the $200,000 high estimate.
SEVIGNY EYES UPRISING
Chloe Sevigny, Oscar-nominated this year for her supporting role in Boys
Don’t Cry, is in negotiations to star in Uprising, a film centred
around Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1943. Director Jon Avnet
hopes to start production in Poland and other Eastern European locations
by year’s end. Paul Brickman, who wrote and directed the Avnet-produced
Risky Business, has penned the script with revisions by Avnet.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising, arguably the best known attempt by Jews to
combat the Germans, took place during April and May 1943, when about 750
fighters tried to prevent German troops from rounding up a batch of Jews
to send off to concentration camps.
Sevigny, who has fielded a slew of offers since the Oscar nomination,
was most recently in theatres with American Psycho. Avnet’s directing
credits include Fried Green Tomatoes, Red Corner and Up Close And Personal.
SORVINO TO STAR IN THRILLER
Mira Sorvino will star in Semana Santa, a mystery thriller to be filmed
on location in Seville, Spain. It tells the story of an American female
police detective, who becomes embroiled in a double-murder case against
the backdrop of Seville’s Holy Week celebrations. German filmmaker
Pepe Danquart is directing the $7 million independent project from a script
by Roy Mitchell.
In Cannes, Sorvino supported her producing effort Famous, a film in which
she appears briefly. She will next be seen starring as Daisy in A&E’s
The Great Gatsby. The actress won an Academy Award in 1996 for her supporting
role in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite. Danquart also has an Oscar
— his Schwarzfahrer (Black Rider) was honoured for Best Live-action
Short in 1994. He recently shot a documentary on ice hockey.
Lucas’ Effects House ’Toons Up Its Plans
George Lucas’ special effects powerhouse Industrial Light & Magic
(ILM) said it plans to expand into the animation business, creating a
slate of computer-generated films and television shows as co-productions
with major studios.
ILM had planned to step into the animation arena about three years ago
with Frankenstein, a computer-generated co-venture with Universal. However,
that project fell through due to creative differences. “That’s
when we first articulated the idea to break into animation,” said
Patty Blau, who will head the effort in her new post as senior VP of production
of the yet-to-be-named division. She was previously president of feature
production, “Now we’re really putting our weight behind it.
We want to produce projects that will showcase the depth of creativity
in ways which have previously been unexplored. We’re disappointed
Frankenstein never went ahead.”
ILM has a staff of 80, creating effects for features that include the
water-heavy The Perfect Storm for Warner Bros., Universal’s live-action
and animated The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle and Warners’
Space Cowboys.
The company has several projects internally in development, “but
we’re talking to other studios about taking on their projects,”
Blau said, “We’d still partner with studios even if we did produce
our own in-house projects. We feel there’s a lot of room to explore
out there.”
CARREY FILM ANGERS NAMI
The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) said it will launch
a “national protest” against 20th Century Fox’s new comedy
Me, Myself & Irene, which stars Jim Carrey as a man whose two personalities
are in love with the same woman, Renee Zellweger’s Irene.
The non-profit advocacy group said the movie and its marketing campaign
show “gross ignorance and insensitivity” to people with mental
illnesses and their families. The film opened in theatres on June 23.
Those who’ve seen the work of the film’s creators, the brothers
Farrelly — Bobby and Peter, who made There’s Something About
Mary, Dumb And Dumber and Kingpin — might argue that gross ignorance
and insensitivity, in pursuit of hilarity, was the pitch. Nevertheless,
the NAMI says ...Irene “perpetuates a myth that schizophrenia —
a severe, biologically based brain disorder — is a split personality.”
Though it’s true that the general public often confuses the two disorders,
it’s unclear exactly what the group — which also protested the
short-lived ABC psychiatric hospital drama Wonderland earlier this year
— was referring to, as Fox’s ‘From Gentle to Mental’
poster campaign hasn’t focused on schizophrenia. Similarly, a Fox
listing of upcoming films describes Carrey’s character as suffering
from “split-personality disorder.”
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