By Rock Squarejaw
Hollywood Reporter
HOLLYWOOD - Hollywood movie studios plan to release 16 more Truman Capote films by year's end to keep up with America's insatiable demand for ever more in-depth exposes of the once-popular writer's endlessly fascinating life, studio executives say.
"Of all the lives we could invest millions of dollars to immortalize on film -- Socrates, Cleopatra, Napoleon, George Washington, Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., any random American service member currently serving overseas -- we could think of no one with greater appeal to the American public than a flamboyant, alcoholic, homosexual writer from New York City," said one executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Writers, directors, producers and actors involved in the upcoming Capote projects said the success of last year's Oscar-winner "Capote" had nothing to do with their interest in making a film about the famous writer of three books. All Hollywood professionals interviewed for this story said that Capote was, for them, the single most interesting individual in world history.
"Capote is spell-bindingly captivating," said Sy Mercury, a director attached to one of the new films, a drama focusing on a meal Capote ate in his kitchen in 1982. "If I could convey to the rest of America one fraction of the deep, personal connection I feel with this great man, I will have done the world an immeasurable public service."
A few of the Capote films to be released in the next month include an adventure about Capote's first trip in a New York City taxicab, a drama about a shopping trip in 1973 in which he purchased an outrageously colored scarf only to return home disillusioned and morose, and a two-hour independent film featuring an actor dressed as Capote sleeping on a chaise lounge.
Some of the executives and financiers said they were worried that a glut of documentary-like Capote films might dilute the audience. To avoid that, a few of the new Capote films will take considerable liberties with the writer's life.
Among the projects are: a buddy cop movie with Martin Lawrence, "Cold Blood Brothers," a gladiator film, "Trumagnus," a romantic comedy, "Breakfast at Truman's," an inspirational teen drama, "Write, Truman, Write!" and an Oliver Stone project tentatively called "Marked: How Nixon, Reagan, and Kissinger conspired to kill Truman Capote and why I'm the only person on earth smart enough to have figured it out."
In addition to the films, TV networks are planning several new Truman Capote shows next fall, including a sitcom, a hospital drama and a reality show in which contestants have to make it on foot from one end of Southside Chicago to the other while dressed as Truman Capote.
If the movies prove as successful as studio executives hope, they say that next year they will begin work on a series of films about Truman Capote's biographers.
All of my Top Ten NetFlix movies are Capote-based thrillers. I hear they are making a Zombie Slasher film based on the flamboyant gay writer where Capote rises from the grave and eats the brains of Streissand fans.
Its called "Capote Ressurrected!" They wanted to cast Jim Carey for the lead role, but they had to get Heath Ledger instead. Carey was too expensive and Ledger really went after the role and impressed the producers with his gay acting skills and his messy eating habits.
Posted by: BelchSpeak | October 27, 2006 at 11:22 AM