Nic Cage playing Liberace is a great, great idea. I’m there. Cage will get Liberace’s voice and posture and clothes just right. And he’s producing it also, so he’ll get to dictate stuff on all the levels. But there’s a problem –a big one — and it’s the fact that Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, the gag-men who wrote large portions of the Scary Movie and Date Movie and Spy Hard screenplays, have written the Liberace thing.
If I were Cage, I would boot these bozos off the project right now and find real screenwriters…seriously. TMZ’s Claude Brodesser has written that Seltzer and Friedberg’s “look at Liberace’s life is understood to be far more serious.” Hold it, Claude…movies are not serous or un-serious. They’re either good or un-good or cheesy or un-cheesy, and anyone who’s seen Date Movies and Spy Hard knows where these gusy are at. Spare us of the notion that Seltzer and Friedberg are suddenly going to channel Robert Bolt or Scott Frank or David Ayer or Cameron Crowe and become different writers.
