ChristopherBuckley Tagged Articles at Cinematical

First we had Lawrence of Arabia, as Peter O'Toole set out to bring Brit T.E. Lawrence's WWI experiences in Arabia to the big screen. Now we're getting his epic, pun-tacular counterpart. Variety reports that Charlize Theron's production company, Denver and Delilah Films, has picked up the rights to Christopher Buckley's Florence of Arabia, which she will produce and star in.

The Variety description makes it sound all sorts of serious -- a State Dept. worker (Theron) fights for women's rights in a Middle Eastern country after her friend marries a prince and gets beheaded. While that sounds a little Mighty Heart-ish, the book is actually a satire more reminiscent of War Inc. The country in question is the fictional Wasabia, and Florence's mission for women's rights -- creating a women's television network, a move that has surprising results. Like, perchance, a riot of Arab Valerie Bertinelli impersonators sick of sappy made-for-TV movies?

One would assume this project is one of the reasons Theron is moving away from the hell that is Atlas Shrugged. There's no reason to jump on a sinking ship when you can ride the waves of satire. The book will be adapted by Dean Craig, scribe of the upcoming Death at a Funeral, but a director hasn't been set yet.

What say you? Is it time for Larry to move aside for Flo?

That Whit Stillman is such a kidder. Less then two weeks ago, Sandra reported on a piece he wrote in The Guardian, detailing all the meandering his movie career has done since The Last Days of Disco was released seven years ago. In the article, he discussed two concrete projects, one of which (a film version of Red Azalea, a memoir of the Chinese revolution) was dead, and another (a small film about ... Jamaican churches) that was sort of getting close to happening. Mostly, though, he made it sounds like he had nothing cinematic really going on. Until, that is, the end of the piece, when he snuck in a suggestion that something might actually be percolating, saying "So I now have a project to take to Cannes;" the clear implication was that the project was the Jamaican churches movie.

It turns out, however, that he had a secret up his sleeve: The movie Stillman is talking up at Cannes has nothing to do with churches. Instead, it's a screen version of Christopher Buckley's (he of Thank You for Smoking fame) Little Green Men, a novel I'm now very much regretting never having read. Check out this summary: The book is "a Washington, D.C., insider comedy about a political talkshow host who's plucked off a golf course by aliens after a particularly probing presidential interview concerning America's space program." HA! HAAAA! Yes, please. (And yes, I'm going to now go and buy ANOTHER book because of this damn job.)

According to Stillman, the film's schedule depends entirely on the whims of "Mr. Big Comedy star," a mysterious fellow who is currently being courted to star. The screenplay is done (but not by Stillman -- that's a first for him), though, so if the cast can be brought together with reasonable speed, the hope is that the movie will go into production later this year. (That said, however, Red Azalea was also once announced at Cannes as Stillman's next project, so these are chickens we really shouldn't start counting just yet.)