In keeping with a noble tradition of bringing you lists based on rumors and conjecture within the entertainment industry, here’s a fun one: crazy-young-man-turned-sad-old-man Bill Murray may be playing Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I will let that sink in. The guy whose arguably best role involved a longstanding feud with a gopher will play one of the most important figures in 20th century history.
Of course, Murray’s gone way past the zany characters that made him famous, creating a second career of playing the depressing aspects of getting old for laughs.
The film takes place over one weekend in 1939, when the King and Queen of England come to visit and the president has an affair with his distant cousin — so I’m going to assume it calls for some comedy. So perhaps Murray wouldn’t be a bad choice. And to put it in context for you, here’s my list of some odd stars cast in true-life tales, and what we can learn from them.
Daniel Day Lewis — Abraham Lincoln
This first entry is cheating a bit, because Spielberg’s biopic, based on the bestseller “Team of Rivals,” hasn’t even begun to film yet. That being said — Daniel Day Lewis. Probably the greatest living actor portraying our favorite, most melancholy president. (Come to think of it, why didn’t Bill Murray take this part. One day, when I’m a studio executive...)
Honestly, I don’t even mind that they had to get a Brit to play Lincoln, because Daniel Day Lewis is just going to make his inner depression into outward craziness, mixing in milkshake metaphors. And thanks to “There Will Be Blood” and “Gangs of New York,” he has a complete top hat collection already.
Lesson: The British are better at faking our accents than we are. Truly they will reclaim their empire with this feat.
Brad Pitt — Jesse James
“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” besides winning awards for clumsiest title, cast Brad Pitt as James, an infamous criminal in the Old West. This, by all means, shouldn’t work. This is the same guy that supermarket rags fawn over. But Pitt is suitably rough to play a murderer (especially in comparison to Casey Affleck, the titular Robert Ford and attempting to play a mumblecore character in a genre piece), even while playing the character as a deeply conflicted individual. Even in comparison to the many, many films depicting James, Pitt manages to surpass them all.
Lesson: Roguish and roguishly handsome are often the same thing.
Tom Cruise — Clauss Von Stauffenberg
See what I just wrote about Brad Pitt above — reverse that for Cruise. I suppose it makes sense that a man most famous for being crazy (and using slave labor for a new motorcycle) would play a Nazi officer in “Valkyrie.” But of course, because Cruise could not deal with a character of grey morality, his version of Stauffenberg is a friend to Jewish people, rather than the man who advocated for Polish citizens to be used as forced labor. Unlike Pitt, Cruise washes away the moral ambiguity and leaves us with the whitewashed view of history.
Lesson: Even if no one has heard of you, and you’re a Nazi, you deserve better than Tom Cruise.
Geoffrey Rush — Peter Sellers
“The Life and Death of Peter Sellers” is shaped like a Peter Sellers film — tangential, lighthearted but with an undercurrent of sadness that belies his tortured genius. Of course, Sellers would never describe it that way, which is why Rush should be commended for capturing a certain amount of nuance in a film that could have easily become too dark or too whimsical.
Looking at Rush’s résumé, it veers from the classical stage to big-budget action flicks. But this role was something different, and Rush goes on to show how a biopic should be cast. Also, the glasses help.
Lesson: Acting is 5 percent inspiration, 95 percent the right pair of glasses.
mrichardson@theeagleonline.com
