Can Todd Haynes’ Gay Love Story Be Saved?
Joaquin Phoenix has pulled this sort of stunt before. In 2019, he tried to back out of The Joker at the last minute. He did it again in 2021, with Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon, and again in 2023, with Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. But in those cases, Phoenix ultimately settled down and the movies ended up getting made. Which raises an obvious question: Is there any way the explicit Todd Haynes gay love story that Phoenix supposedly got cold feet over and abruptly exited Aug. 9 — just five days before shooting was scheduled to begin in Guadalajara, Mexico, where sets were already being built and crews were waiting for the Oscar-winning actor to arrive — might somehow also end up getting made? Rambling Reporter has been hearing all sorts of rumors about eleventh-hour attempts to salvage the untitled project, including reports that Haynes had been contemplating recasting Phoenix’s part. Pedro Pascal’s name has been bandied about, though sources tell THR he’d be an unlikely choice given that Pascal’s schedule is packed until the end of the year with Fantastic Four and The Mandalorian shoots and also because Haynes had already cast Top Gun: Maverick‘s Danny Ramirez as Phoenix’s love interest in the film, which centers on a corrupt L.A. cop in the 1930s who has a torrid affair with a nonwhite male character. “Having two Latinos in the roles doesn’t make a lot of sense,” one talent rep tells THR. Meanwhile, Rambling hears that Haynes’ producers have been considering hitting Phoenix with a lawsuit to cover lost costs, said to amount to several million dollars. Might that entice Phoenix back to the set? Anything is possible, but it’s unlikely, given that money doesn’t appear to be a problem for the actor these days; he got paid $25 million for the Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, which bows at the Venice Film Festival in September. In other words, unless this last-minute vanishing act is another bizarre Phoenix prank — remember in 2008 when he pretended to give up acting to become a rap star? — it seems that this is one doomed love story that truly has been star-crossed.
Carol Burnett, 90, Proves You’re Never Too Old to Pitch
At the Paley Center premiere of the Bob Mackie bio-doc Naked Illusion in May, TCM host Dave Karger was minding his own business when Carol Burnett decided to hold an impromptu pitch meeting. “She came up to me to tell me how much she loved TCM,” Karger tells THR. “She was so sweet. But then, the next words out of her mouth were, ‘I have an idea for something I would like to do on TCM.’ She said that between movies, we should show skits from her show that were spoofs of old films.” Burnett, of course, frequently satirized Hollywood classics on her 1967-78 CBS sketch comedy series The Carol Burnett Show — her sendups of Gone With the Wind and Mildred Pierce are classics in their own right — so Karger took the idea to his TCM bosses. Not surprisingly, they loved the concept, and plans are being ironed out not only to show some of Burnett’s vintage movie takeoffs between feature presentations but for the legend to appear on the channel to introduce them. TCM says the spoofs could start appearing as soon as December.
Moon Shot: Frank Zappa’s Daughter Pens Cutting Memoir
One of the downsides of naming your child “Moon Unit” is that someday that offspring might write a scathing memoir about your shortcomings as a parent. For Frank Zappa, that day of reckoning is nigh — Aug. 22, to be exact — with the publication of Earth to Moon, Moon Unit Zappa’s unflinchingly candid look at her upbringing in the home of one of the 1970s’ most iconoclastic musicians. “I might have just written fun essays about the stuff that’s quirky about my family,” Zappa, 56, tells THR. Instead, she chose to “reassess my entire existence.” To be fair, not all her memories of her dad, who died in 1993 when she was 26, are bad ones. She gives Frank credit for “my work ethic, my integrity, my taste buds, my fashion sense, my humor, my hair, my good mind and my ability to reason.” But she also describes him as aloof, obsessive and narcissistic. (Her mother, Gail, who died in 2015, comes across just as bad, if not worse.) “If we’d got a better version of him at home, this might be a different story,” Zappa says. “But that’s a wasted wish.” — ANDY LEWIS
This story first appeared in the August 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
