David Cronenberg and Don DeLillo.
Right away, those two names attached to a project guarantee my interest. Cronenberg is one of my favorite directors, a brilliant man with a savage eye for human behavior, and DeLillo is an amazing author. His books are black and painful and funny and horrifying, and each of them serves as a sort of snapshot of a time and place.
So when I read that Cronenberg is going to make DeLillo’s Cosmopolis as a film, I’m very interested. Then I read a little further and I see Paul Giamatti and Marion Cotillard are also attached, and that’s cool. Good cast, great actors, seem like they’d be a good fit with Cronenberg. And who else is starring?
Oh, yeah… that’s right. Robert Pattinson, in his first big role after he wraps work on the last of the “Twilight” films.
It’s a huge role for him, and it’s an interesting moment for Cronenberg and DeLillo. I may love these guys, but their cultural currency isn’t what it could be. Not a lot of teenagers out there are rabidly devouring “White Noise” or “Libra” these days or tracking down DVDs of “The Brood” and “Videodrome.” Robert Pattinson has a certain amount of cultural cache that automatically brings fresh eyes to something like this.
And he might be great. I wouldn’t be able to judge that yet based on the “Twilight” films because anybody with nice cheekbones could do what he’s done in those films. They haven’t really taxed him as a performer in any way. What they did was grant him an audience that will now be at least a little more willing to try something unconventional because he’s in it.
The book deals with a crisis point in world economics as seen through the filter of one man, Eric Packer, and his journey across town for a haircut. Yep, seriously. And much of the book is set within Packer’s luxury stretch limo during the drive through a futuristic Manhattan. It’s a wild book, with tons of characters and storylines criss-crossing, and it sounds like Cronenberg, who’s been working on the film since 2009, is finally getting ready to put it in front of the camera.
Pattinson has to finish work on “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” for director Bill Condon first, but it sounds like this may be the film he makes immediately after.
We’ll keep you posted on “Cosmopolis,” and in the meantime, I am dying to hear what all the “Twilight” fans who ran out to buy the book today think of it.