The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I'm in Savannah, Georgia to spend a week as a guest blogger for the Savannah Film Festival, an eight-day fest hosted in the historic Southern town by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). [Read my entries in the "Voices from the Fest" section on the festival website.] As the town prepares to kick off the 12th annual festivities with the Iraq film, or rather post-Iraq film, The Messenger, I'm wondering how SFF's growing success might reflect or even influence the rise of film festivals that similarly fall somewhere in between the biggies (Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice) and the little guys.

For starters, a brief look at SFF's line-up and star-studded guest list. The festival begins today, October 31, with The Messenger, a Sundance entry that has Oscar possibilities but more likely will make a run at the Indie Spirit Awards. Stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster will be in attendance. (I will be attempting to run into them at the local Starbucks or wherever it is that Hollywood actors hang out when they visit other cities.) Another Oscar hopeful, the Emily Blunt-starring period biopic The Young Victoria, is screening the following day.

And then there are the almost certain Oscar pictures: George Clooney in The Men Who Stare At Goats; Lone Scherfig's An Education; Michael Haneke's Cannes winner The White Ribbon; Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, with star Jeremy Renner in attendance; and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, which will bring both director Lee Daniels and his star Gabourey Sidibe to town.

Read on for more about this year's Savannah Film Festival.

It's been almost two years since I first wrote about The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond. The forgotten Tennessee Williams screenplay started cooking up in November 2006, with a stellar cast of Ellen Burstyn, David Strathairn, Ann-Margret, Chris Evans, and ... Lindsay Lohan? This was, however, before her personal demons took center stage and made a complete mess of her career. Bryce Dallas Howard starting circling the project in 2007, and now, finally, you can get a peek of her in the film above (courtesy of Rope of Silicon).

Can you imagine Lohan up there? Methinks her struggles will be a blessing for the film, which centers on Fisher Willow (Howard) -- a 1920s debutant who makes waves because of her "distaste for narrow-minded people and a penchant for shocking and insulting those around her." When she falls for a lower-class young man (Evans), she has to trick her family into thinking that he's upper class. But when she loses a diamond (like the title suggests), you can imagine what happens.

The film will finally begin to hit our eager eyes at TIFF next month.

Whether she's losing roles because she's too busy, because she's done with independents or because she's unreliable, Lindsay Lohan is so known for dropping out of projects that some of us have coined the action as "pulling a La Lohan." It isn't a surprise now to learn that she's being replaced in another film, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond. You may remember the plot of the Tennessee Williams-penned film, which we told you about in November, as centering on a Southern socialite in 1920s Memphis. Lohan had been cast as that socialite, but now the role is being offered to Bryce Dallas Howard.

As far as reliability goes, Howard may be the better choice, but as for acting talent, I'd honestly rather have Lohan. Howard has so far done awful things for the films she's starred in, and she nearly damaged my faith in one of my favorite filmmakers, Lars von Trier. I'm hoping that Sam Raimi actually gets smart and cuts most of her performance from Spider-Man 3 -- she was almost completely absent from the trailer -- although it might help him to keep her just to make Kirsten Dunst look better. I think for Williams' fans, spoiled with the memories of great actors starring in film versions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Glass Menagerie, among others, as well as in his previously filmed screenplays like my personal favorite, Baby Doll, Howard will be a horrible addition to Teardrop Diamond's cast.

The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond is a forgotten screenplay* penned by Tennessee Williams. In fact, if you search Wikipedia, it doesn't even come up. It is part of a collection that was found after the playwright's death, and was subsequently published in 1984. It is now coming to the silver screen -- with a headline actress guaranteed to grab people's attention.

Continuing her attraction to almost larger-than-life casts, Lindsay Lohan will star in the feature, which also includes Chris Evans, Ellen Burstyn, David Strathairn and Ann-Margret. The script tells the story of Fisher Willow (Lohan), a 1920's debutante from Memphis with an allergy to narrow-mindedness and a habit for throwing shocks and insults. She falls for Jimmy (Evans), the poor son of an alcoholic man (Strathairn) who works for her family. Obviously, the class divide causes a strain which is further amplified when Fisher loses a diamond.

The casting seems fitting on all accounts. Lohan has made an image for herself as a shocking socialite, and she is familiar with the pressures of losing high-price jewellery, a mistake that is becoming a trend. Burstyn as the southern matriarch is a no-brainer, as is Ann-Margret as Fisher's spinster aunt. And Strathairn, well, he embodies great, gritty acting.

I see this film going one of two ways. There could be a reason no one knows about the play ... and if it's bad, it could swallow the talents of the cast. Or, it could take the Titus route. Although Titus Andronicus was a surprising choice from Shakespeare's vast collection (although one of my personal favorites), it came together in an intriguing, artsy horror fest.

[via The Hollywood Reporter]

*Thank you, Derek for pointing out that this wasn't a theatrical play, but a screenplay. MB