Can Todd Haynes’ Homosexual Love Story Be Saved?

Joaquin Phoenix has pulled this kind of stunt earlier than. In 2019, he tried to again out of The Joker on the final minute. He did it once more in 2021, with Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon, and once more in 2023, with Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. However in these instances, Phoenix finally settled down and the films ended up getting made. Which raises an apparent query: Is there any approach the express Todd Haynes homosexual love story that Phoenix supposedly obtained chilly toes over and abruptly exited Aug. 9 — simply 5 days earlier than capturing was scheduled to start in Guadalajara, Mexico, the place units have been already being constructed and crews have been ready for the Oscar-winning actor to reach — would possibly someway additionally find yourself getting made? Rambling Reporter has been listening to all types of rumors about eleventh-hour makes an attempt to salvage the untitled mission, together with stories that Haynes had been considering recasting Phoenix’s half. Pedro Pascal’s title has been bandied about, although sources inform THR he’d be an unlikely selection on condition that Pascal’s schedule is packed till the tip of the yr with Improbable 4 and The Mandalorian shoots and in addition as a result of Haynes had already forged Prime Gun: Maverick‘s Danny Ramirez as Phoenix’s love curiosity within the movie, which facilities on a corrupt L.A. cop within the Nineteen Thirties who has a torrid affair with a nonwhite male character. “Having two Latinos within the roles doesn’t make a variety of sense,” one expertise rep tells THR. In the meantime, Rambling hears that Haynes’ producers have been contemplating hitting Phoenix with a lawsuit to cowl misplaced prices, stated to quantity to a number of million {dollars}. Would possibly that entice Phoenix again to the set? Something is feasible, however it’s unlikely, given that cash doesn’t look like an issue for the actor today; he obtained paid $25 million for the Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, which bows on the Venice Movie Competition in September. In different phrases, except this last-minute vanishing act is one other weird Phoenix prank — keep in mind in 2008 when he pretended to surrender performing to turn out to be a rap star? — plainly that is one doomed love story that really has been star-crossed.

Carol Burnett, 90, Proves You’re By no means Too Previous to Pitch

On the Paley Heart premiere of the Bob Mackie bio-doc Bare Phantasm in Could, TCM host Dave Karger was minding his personal enterprise when Carol Burnett determined to carry an impromptu pitch assembly. “She got here as much as me to inform me how a lot she cherished TCM,” Karger tells THR. “She was so candy. However then, the following phrases out of her mouth have been, ‘I’ve an concept for one thing I wish to do on TCM.’ She stated that between films, we must always present skits from her present that have been spoofs of previous movies.” Burnett, after all, incessantly satirized Hollywood classics on her 1967-78 CBS sketch comedy collection The Carol Burnett Present — her sendups of Gone With the Wind and Mildred Pierce are classics in their very own proper — so Karger took the concept to his TCM bosses. Not surprisingly, they cherished the idea, and plans are being ironed out not solely to point out a few of Burnett’s classic film takeoffs between characteristic shows however for the legend to look on the channel to introduce them. TCM says the spoofs may begin showing as quickly as December.

Moon Shot: Frank Zappa’s Daughter Pens Chopping Memoir

One of many downsides of naming your youngster “Moon Unit” is that sometime that offspring would possibly write a scathing memoir about your shortcomings as a mother or father. For Frank Zappa, that day of reckoning is nigh — Aug. 22, to be actual — with the publication of Earth to Moon, Moon Unit Zappa’s unflinchingly candid take a look at her upbringing within the house of one of many Seventies’ most iconoclastic musicians. “I might need simply written enjoyable essays in regards to the stuff that’s quirky about my household,” Zappa, 56, tells THR. As an alternative, she selected to “reassess my total existence.” To be honest, not all her reminiscences of her dad, who died in 1993 when she was 26, are unhealthy ones. She provides Frank credit score for “my work ethic, my integrity, my style buds, my style sense, my humor, my hair, my good thoughts and my means to cause.” However she additionally describes him as aloof, obsessive and narcissistic. (Her mom, Gail, who died in 2015, comes throughout simply as unhealthy, if not worse.) “If we’d obtained a greater model of him at house, this is perhaps a special story,” Zappa says. “However that’s a wasted want.” — ANDY LEWIS

This story first appeared within the August 21 problem of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.