Charlie Kaufman's movies simply aren't for everybody. I get that. They don't follow typical Hollywood genres, the stories often fold in on themselves, and they approach broad subjects in an off-kilter fashion. But his stories always find something true and heartfelt. I've always said that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind says more about love and relationships than any ten rom-coms or Nicholas Sparks flicks we've seen over the last few years. But Kaufman's next film looks to be something totally different for him, a biting satire of the Hollywood biz titled Frank or Francis.
Momentum on the film really picked up in July when Jack Black, Steve Carell, and Nic Cage came aboard, and now we can add one more impressive name to the list: Kevin Kline. The versatile actor's talents will be put to heavy use in a dual role. And with the film said to involve a heavy amount of musical numbers, he may be forced to bust a tune or two.
What we've known so far has the film as a harsh critique of the entire Hollywood machine, including the world of online film criticism. In it's simplest form, the story would follow a war of words between a big shot filmmaker named Frank(Steve Carell), and a popular online blogger named Francis(Black). Thanks to ThePlaylist, we now have an expanded synopsis, which makes the film sound like Kafuman's craziest idea yet...
Frank Arder (Carell), a well-meaning, but pretentious screenwriter-turned-filmmaker whose feature-film “You” becomes a sensation in Hollywood after its nominated for a record-breaking amount of Academy Awards; Francis (Black) is a charisma-free, but whip-smart online blogger/commenter who lives in his parents attic and his biting critiques of Tinsteltown and its movies have earned him a bit of a following; and in some truly inspired casting, Cage will play Alan Modell, aka the Emcee, an well-known comedian known for his wildly popular and immensely insipid “Fat Dad” roles, who begins to experience his career fall into decline and desperately tries to put it back on track at any cost.
Kline will play Richard Waller, the brother of filmmaker Jonathan Waller. After Jonathan's hit epic 'Hiroshima' loses out on the Best Picture award, the two create Richard's Head, a supercomputer which analyzes all of the hit screenplays ever produced and come up with a popular, inoffensive "God". Kline will also voice the Richard's Head supercomputer. Weird enough for you? Even for Kaufman this is pretty far out.
Last we heard there were still two female roles yet to be cast, both requiring some amount of singing. I still hope Zooey Deschanel gets one of them but with her new (terrible) show on Fox she may not have the time. Shooting kicks off in January, and you can bet we'll be following this one closely.
