Four days ago I reported on an LA Film Festival screenwriter seminar in which Diablo Cody said that her dream project would be a biopic of Brian Wilson. (Which seemed like a cool idea.) And today River Road Entertainment announced it has secured the Wilson’s “life rights” (as well as those of his wife Melinda Wilson) and is actively developing a feature film about the legendary singer, songwriter and leader of The Beach Boys with Oren Moverman (director and co-writer of The Messenger) handling the script.
What’s done is done…fine. But I could feel the passion in Cody’s words and eyes when she said she’d love to write a Wilson biopic, and I’ve read Young Adult since last Sunday and I’d say her writing is a bit sassier and more layered and more believably angst-ridden than the writing in The Messenger (even though, yes, Moverman got an Oscar nomination for it). If I was Pohlad I’d definitely try to bring her in to polish or punch up Moverman, to lend a little spritz or spunkitude or marquee-power.
The Messenger told me that Moverman basically does gloom and need and hurt, but Wilson’s life story is drenched in that stuff from the get-go. A movie about Wilson needs someone who can inject some wiggy flavor and attitude that would make it play a little nuts in a way that mirrors Wilson’s head. I’ve met Wilson and I’ve heard the stories. He’ll never be sane, and that’s a good thing.
If you were Bill Pohlad, head of River Road, and you had an either-or choice between Moverman and Cody, would you honestly choose Moverman? Okay, maybe you’d want someone to lay down the framework and the architecture, but the story of a guy losing his grip and getting obese and succumbing to a downward-swirl syndrome needs a touch of wackitude and surrealism, a sense of the absurd…or maybe a sense of the ever-present balance between nutbaggery and genius. You can’t just glumly and dolefully “tell the story”…this happens and that happens and blah blah.
Cody had to know about the River Road/Moverman deal when she mentioned her interest last weekend right?
