For your consideration: Joe Keenan’s 1988 screwball comedic novel Blue Heaven for the screen. But how? When to set it? With whom?
After Mr. Lousy’s reading list was published, followed by the shocking (to Lousy) revelation that Doris W and I had dined with the book’s author Joe Keenan, I dug around the house for my own dog-eared paperback copy, which I found nestled between some film review compilations by Pauline Kael.
I re-read the novel (personally autographed – I had no idea that I’d brought it to dinner!) for the first time in 20 years, and perhaps as my copy spent at least a decade on a shelf fermenting with Pauline Kael, I have been wondering why the story never found its way onto a screen.
I do believe that this came up during dinner, though I don’t remember the specifics being discussed. Joe Keenan has gone on to have a career writing for TV, so surely an adaptation must have been floated at some point, and just as surely he himself must have been considered to write or supervise the script. What happened?
It’s the screwball comedy that the eighties never rightfully got. Until the late nineties, I doubt a gay screwball comedy would have gotten produced. Ellen and Will & Grace had some paving to do, and even now, Steven Soderbergh couldn’t get his Liberace pic a distributor (too gay) and had to turn to HBO to get it produced. I imagine cable is where I would prefer Blue Heaven to take shape: where the story could stay truest to form.
And by true to form, I wonder if that means setting it in the eighties. I can envision an easy update to 2013, a 25-year jump from 1988, the year it was originally published. But will it lose any charm? Or could the late eighties give it a good shot at a fun period piece without sending it over the top into campy nostalgia?
1980s-specifics that struck me upon re-reading Blue Heaven:
- Cocaine! While rather casual in use, the drug does factor heavily into the denouement with The Duchess. Ecstasy too!
- No smart phones. Any shift to the present day would entail some re-writes to carry plot twists that would have been cut dead by ubiquitous smart phones, not to mention Skype.
- Italian mafia. This seems a little dated even for ’88, though we hadn’t even been subjected yet to The Godfather III, which sort of put the nail in the coffin for me. Now a Mexican drug cartel might work better, but making the dynamics comedic would be daunting.
- The art and the fashion: both are outlandish and satired in the book. The outlandishness and satire would need new targets for art and fashion, which really wouldn’t be a challenge, for although both are always changing, both always offer a generous field for target practice.
One NY 1980s-specific not found in the book was any mention whatsoever to AIDS. When I turned up in NY around 1990, it was completely inescapable. Maybe AIDS doesn’t have a place in screwball comedy, and maybe in 1988 gays needed a respite, but in retrospect, the absence of any reference is striking, more so now than then.
I do believe at our dinnerJoe Keenan brought up casting, though I don’t know that he made any specific recommendations. Now they would all have to be shifted at any rate. Maybe some of the same players, but in different roles to account for the quarter century elapsed.
Some characters would need to be cut for time, but some simply can’t be sacrificed. So please consider who might take on:
- Gilbert – The part has the now typed, put-upon, barely-coping-surrounded-by-disfunction, grimacing-but-going-along-with-it Jason Bateman from 2003 written all over it. Who’s the 2003 Jason Bateman in 2013?
- Philip – Someone has to make a selfish and lazy character magnetic, if not likable.
- Moira – Who can cackle with cruelty and still present a winning smile? This one is key.
- Claire – I’m going to nominate Melissa McCarthy right outta the gate.
- Vulpina – This role can be more cartoonish and demands that presence.
- Gunther – See note on Vulpina.
- Philip’s naïve mother: Ditsy like Goldie Hawn but not cloying like Goldie Hawn.
- Philip’s mafioso stepfather: Murderous, affable, and attractive.
- The Duchess!!! (really two characters): I refuse to consider Eric Stonestreet from Modern Family, though I think he would draw an audience. Too easy. Let’s be inventive here!
- Freddy Bombelli: the ancient mob boss controlling three families. I don’t want Al Pacino. I don’t need any reminders of The Godfather III. How about Alex Rocco? He’s actually a Godfather veteran (though not of the full trilogy, thankfully), and he played a similar role in the series finale of Party Down. In fact, please review this clip in which he does a Jewish variation on Bombelli, complete with near expiration:
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As far as directors go, can ban the Glee gay who is branching out in all sorts of horrible directions? Part of me wants to see if Peter Bogdanovich could recapture the glory of What’s Up Doc, because despite nearly everyone else’s opinion to the contrary, I still find it a wondrous ode to 1930s Hollywood screwball comedy. If not him, then let’s see what Tina Fey could pull off. She has proven with 30 Rock to fully accomplished in rapid-fire dialogue set off in pointedly preposterous scenarios, not just week after week, but year after year. Or maybe David O. Russell? He could take the nuttiness of Flirting with Disaster a step further, and though he’s awful to his actors, he’s brilliant with them.
I want to line this up right now! And Mr. Lousy, in case you are thinking of a sequel, bear in mind that I have not yet read Putting on the Ritz or My Lucky Star. They’re newly arrived and waiting on the bookshelf. Next to Pauline Kael.
I would love LOVE if Blue Heaven was a movie. I’m picturing Soapdish – in time period and tone. Soapdish was released in 1991 but I think it’s way more of an 80s movie than the 90s. It was looking back even to the 80s excess heyday of soaps. It cannot be updated. As you mentioned there are too many technological advances that would get in the way of the farce. This froth is too delicate to disturb.
I am all for a casting call but I think we have to agree on something first. I have not reread it for about a year now but I remember Gilbert, Phillip and Claire being in their mid-20s. I think this is key to their charming naivete about each other and their situation. Also their – and partcularly Gilbert’s – never say die attitude owes a lot to being the kind of charming asshole only someone in their mid-20s can be. And the parents would be in their late 40s/50s meaning, I’m afraid, they’d be our contemporaries.
Tonally, Jason Bateman would be great but he’s way too old as is Melissa McCarthy. I think we’re looking more at the Michael Ceras and Emma Stones. One idea I had from your Glee mention is Amber Riley from Glee. Play with the race a little but she can definitely handle the singing. Joseph Gordon Levitt?
What about Phillip Baker Hall for Freddy Bombelli? For Phillip’s stepdad I’m thinking Bobby Cannavale but he’d have to play older or we need to find an older equivalent.
So Raul – are you on board with the age range?
Also, cigarettes!
I didn’t reply properly before, so check the other comments I made.
Val Kilmer as Holly. It’s the comeback nobody saw coming.
I plead with you to see The Island of Doctor Moreau starring Kilmer and Brando. It changed my life after seeing it at the Logan many moons ago.
Ruth Wilson (who played Alice on Luther) as Moira.
Oh my god – yes!
Diverget casting news. Apparently Pamuk from Downton is Four. Disappointing. Wait did you read it yet?
I’m not really disappointed with Pamuk as Four, though I admit I don’t remember him all that well. Isn’t he in a new detective series also? The character is supposed to be eighteen, but then, I did find that rather improbable.
I am about midway through Insurgent. I sort of stalled out of some boredom with the samey-same romance and frustration with my difficulty reading it in German. I also wish that there were more effort with the sci in the sci-fi. The serums all seem to work by magic rather than bio-chemistry or psycho-pharmacology, and I still don’t really get the alternate substance that worked on Four when the simulation drug on him failed.
I plan to hit it again after I finish one other book.
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/03/15/divergent-four-theo-james/
I am all for Maggie Q. I have a sense that she will play the tattoo artist who tips the lead character off that she is a Divergent.
If Kate Winslet is in talks, I imagine it must be for the leader of the Erudite, right? It’s either that or the lead’s mother, though that’s not much of a part save for the finale. I don’t see any other grown-up roles for women in the first book.
When I’m finished with Insurgent, let’s cast the second book. It has some better roles for seniors.
Yes, I agree on the twenty-something age range for the central characters. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, already slightly long in the tooth, would be my vote for Philip. For Gilbert, I would consider Neil Patrick Harris. They’ve worked great together. I hunted for a clip of a skit/play that they did, but I can only find what’s recorded on people’s phones. I dunno about Michael Cera, but I think Emma Stone could manage Moira pretty well.
Actually, JGL and NPH could do it on B’way as a musical.
I thought Melissa McCarthy could get away with Claire, but she is indeed of a different age range.
Re: Jason Bateman – remember I demanded the 2003 version. I think NPH could do Gilbert – and add some homo-authenticity to the piece.
Bobby Cannavale seems a bit young for the stepfather, but he could test. Philip Baker Hall might make an interesting Freddy. I have yet to see Children’s Hospital!
You’ll have to submit a piece for Amber Riley. I have a Glee allergy that has limited me to only seconds of the show.
And I feel moved to watch Soapdish again! I don’t believe I’ve seen it since it first came out on video. I do remember the plot getting progressively farcical, which does match Blue Heaven. I’ll have some Soapdish words later!
Hold it. Doogie Howser is turning 40? How is this shit possible?
I will find another role for him.
You know, I forgot the gossip-hound Holly! He’s expendable in a 100-minute time frame, but he does have some good repartee and forces Gilbert and Philip to be on their toes.
And you know the big thing, that I meant to write and forgot:
New York has same-sex marriage!
This was really the biggest stumbling block to a contemporary setting. This would throw off the story completely.
It absolutely must take place in the mid- to late-eighties.