christopher buckley 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?

Following the success of Thank You For Smoking, producers Edward R. Pressman (Edward R. Pressman Film Corp.) and Stephen Belafonte (WhiteShark Films) have decided to stick with Christopher Buckley's work by moving forward with a planned adaptation of Buckley's novel God Is My Broker, attaching Peter Himmelstein to pen the script. On Smoking, Pressman (who bought the rights to Broker back in 1998) served as executive producer, while Belafonte was an associate producer; Alan and Gabe Polsky will also produce through their Polsky Films.

Buckley's book follows an alcoholic Wall Street stock broker who's so fed up with his life that he ditches everything to join a monastery. However, when he's unable to accept the monks' vow of poverty, the broker taps back into some of those old skills by transforming his new environment into the same one he left behind. (Why is it hard for me to imagine a bunch of monks chain-smoking and cursing at a row of computer monitors?) Currently, no cast or director is attached; Jason Reitman is not involved, nor could I see him taking to this sort of material. Seems like a fun enough story, though I'm not sure why it's taken nine years to get off the ground. Anyone read the book? Care to share your opinions?

It's not so unusual to see a feature film developed into a TV show, but when the film in question is an indie pic, grossed only $25 million at the box office (which, mind you, is pretty damn good) and revolved around a man whose job it was to do PR for big tobacco, well, that's pretty unusual. NBC, who recently brought Friday Night Lights to the small screen, will be doing the same for Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking -- however, Reitman himself does not appear to be involved.

Instead, Rick Cleveland (Six Feet Under, The West Wing) has come onbard to write and exec produce, and David O. Sacks (who produced the film version) will also exec produce. Pic, which was based on a novel by Christopher Buckley (who will serve as a consulting producer on the TV show), told the story of Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), a man desperately trying to balance his job as a spin-doctor for big tobacco and his responsibilities as a dad. The TV version will pick up where the film left off; Nick will be running his own firm where clients could include "fast food companies, environmental polluters or politicos caught with their pants down." Pretty much, when someone with deep pockets finds themselves wrapped up in a PR nightmare, Naylor is the guy you hire to make things right. No word yet on casting, but there's a good chance Eckhart will not reprise his role.

Man, there's so many ways they can go with this, but it really will depend on who they get to play Naylor. Any suggestions?

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.)