When I was looking for a link for this post, I ran across some really good news I had not previously heard. Martin Scorcese is making a movie based on Edmund Morris’ The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, which I happen to be reading.
Now folks, this is what we call exciting movie news! Why didn’t the Real Message Center send me a pop-up about this one?
I’m so pumped — or DEE-lighted, as Morris tells us Ted would have said — that I don’t even mind that young Mr. Roosevelt will be portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind anyway, after the excellent job he did in "The Departed." And "The Aviator," for that matter. Sure, he may not be Harvey Keitel, but then who can imagine Keitel as TR?
Basically, Scorcese has turned DiCaprio into a highly respectable entity, "Titanic" notwithstanding. It even strikes me now that they teamed up to do a movie about New York from the days when TR was police commissioner there, and police HQ was on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. OK, so, it was a generation before, but it was the right century.
I haven’t looked forward to a film production this much since I heard HBO was going to do Band of Brothers…
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I hope this crap isnt true…
Well, you could just read the book and skip the movie. But I recommend “Mornings on Horseback” by David McCullough. Same subject but by a better writer.
Theodore Roosevelt played by DiCaprio?
No, no, a thousand times no.
And you can tell ’em I said so.
What utter rubbish and nonsense. DiCaprio has been a dynamo of an actor from day one. His performance as a 17 year old in This Boy’s Life was the real beginning of his current partnership with Scorsese. We can all thank Robert DeNiro for having such an astute eye for talent. I don’t think any other actor in Hollywood today is better qualified to play Teddy Roosevelt and I can’t wait to see the film. If DiCaprio is in it, then that’s good enough for me.
Found: a DiCaprio fan.
Lost, possibly: Roosevelt’s singularity in DiCaprio’s all-too-familiar face.
I’d rather see someone whose face I haven’t already memorized play the role.
That’s no knock on DiCaprio’s talent. I’m just saying there’s too much of him locked away in my head as other people to see him as Roosevelt, too, since I already have Roosevelt’s face locked away in my head, too.
Actually, I AM reading the book, and enjoying it. I plan to read the sequel as well. But thanks for the heads-up on McCullough’s.
I am so sick of people bagging Titanic. No one can write an article about Leo these days without a derogatory mention of the film, and how it was such a bad role. For God’s sake. It wasn’t meant to be an arthouse film – it was about an actual historical event. An epic. You had to have all those special effects otherwise the ship and sinking wouldn’t have looked real. The love story may have been ‘ordinary’, but it was classic. Get over it. It was a great film. Everyone just shunned it because of it’s popularity, and we all know it’s not ‘cool’ to be into commercialism.