We at the eXile feel confident that we shared the feelings of most Americans after the collapse of the World Trade Center three weeks ago, when we thought to ourselves, in anguish, "Who has the film rights to the number ‘9-1-1’? Quick, get an agent on the phone!" And indeed, since then, we have in fact contacted our house film agent, just to see how many "9/11" scripts are out there already. From what little we know of the business, we’re betting that the title has already been snapped up, with a director and six or seven big names, plus David Caruso, already signed to the project. Anyway, we’re waiting for the report from our agent on that one… In the meantime, we hunkered down here in Moscow to prepare ourselves for the other War With Islam-inspired titles we’re certain to see within the next year or two. Here’s a short list of inevitable titles, along with commentary by the eXile film agent, Sidney Rubin of the William Morris Agency:
TITLE: 9/11
CAST:
Natasha ("Chick from Species") Henstridge, Haley Joel Osment, Michael Rooker, Toby Maguire
PLOT:
Rooker-Henstridge-Osment are a mildly dysfunctional middle class New York family. Henstridge is a Harvard grad who drinks too much and is losing her looks because she’s unhappily married to Rooker, a macho New York City fireman whom she found attractive ten years ago but now feels emotionally and intellectually constricted by. But when Rooker dies fighting the World Trade Center fire, she and her nightmare-plagued son Osment feel a void. Enter Maguire, Rooker’s effete brother-opposite, who plays bass in a Violent Femmes-style band and writes dissidenty anti-corporate articles for The Village Voice. Despite the fact that they live in the same city, Maguire and Rooker hadn’t talked in years when 9/11 arrives. Guilt-plagued after Rooker’s funeral, he steps into his brother’s role in the family, curing Osment’s nightmares and being the intelligent platonic companion Henstridge has needed all these years. But when the war in Afghanistan begins, Maguire, awakened to a new sense of patriotic duty, enlists and fights—for his brother’s memory. Featuring original songs by Hootie and the Blowfish.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"Rooker’s ready for this kind of move up. It took ten years of good-guy action roles to make up for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Maguire’s a hard sell to middle America."
TITLE: BUNKER BUDDIES
CAST:
Rob Schneider, Chris Tucker, Jon Voight
PLOT:
In war, all cowards are on the same side! Schneider and Tucker are both deserters—Schneider from the 101st Airborne (where he was serving as punishment for an excess of parking tickets), and Tucker from the Taliban army. Before a major ground battle, the two of them by chance choose to hide in the same deserted mountain bunker. After some initial confrontational hilarity, the two of them decide to team up and make a run for China together—in drag. With Jon Voight as the evil MP commander. Jamie Farr appears in a brief cameo that is a winking nod to both his cross-dressing Klinger in M*A*S*H and his car-happy oil sheik in the Cannonball Run series.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"A version of this script, set in the Persian gulf, was passed around ten years ago, but it died when they couldn’t get anyone to play the Iraqi. Tucker will get $30 million to play an Afghan."
TITLE: WTC
CAST:
Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, Kevin Kline, Heath Ledger, Jennifer Lopez, Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Helen Hunt, Gregg Kinnear, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Michael Jordan, Matthew McConaghey, Danny Glover, Kevin Pollak, Christopher Reeve, Richard Harris, Charlton Heston
PLOT:
A sweeping, ensemble-cast epic dramatizing the terrorist attacks and the initial aftermath. The unprecedented star-studded cast will make for an opening credits sequence lasting in excess of 30 minutes. To make the budget manageable, all the stars will be working for scale, which they will donate to the World Trade Center relief fund. Way too many subplots to go into; among others, Roberts and Hanks are reporters for rival networks who must join forces in order to bring the story to the people (and save a few lives in the process); Australian tourist Ledger meets and falls in love with cleaning woman J-Lo on the 95th floor of the North Tower after the first plane hits (when they’re trapped in the subsequent debris, he sacrifices himself so that she may survive); President Bush (Harrison Ford) flies from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska on Air Force One in the aftermath of the attacks, all the while arguing with aides Costner and Hunt that he is needed immediately back in Washington; Reeve, a high-powered stock broker who had been paralyzed in a cocaine-and-alcohol-fueled car crash that took three other lives (including a 9-month-old infant), comes to terms with his guilt and rejoins the human race as he mourns with other Americans in the wake of the tragedy; Richard Harris, a NYC fire chief on his final day before retiring, learns that his entire squad has been killed in the rescue operation, etc. NY Mayor Rudi Giuliani and countless senators and former Secretaries of State and Defense appear as themselves.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"This one has it all, Titanic meets Grand Canyon meets Gladiator meets A Bridge Too Far. Just the horde of personal assistants and hair stylists attending to all the stars will be twice as large as the crew of an average film. Reportedly, the studio is still in negotiations with the National Security Administration to have George W. play himself."
TITLE: THE PROPHET
CAST:
Macaulay Culkin, Angela Bassett, Robin Williams (voices)
PLOT:
Disney’s attempt to show the true, peaceful story of Islam in an animated blockbuster. There will be some controversy when Culkin is chosen as the voice for the teenage Mohammed. With Bassett as his mother and Danny Glover as the archangel Gabriel. Star-studded soundtrack will include a duet between Michael Jackson and Turkish megastar Tarkan.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"P.O.E. 2? More like pee-yew, too. Bet on it, though—though nobody wants to even take a lunch about this film, it will get made."
TITLE: FINAL SHOWDOWN
CAST:
Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers of the mid 1980s
PLOT:
Zucker brothers David and Jerry team up as co-directors for the first time since 1986’s Ruthless People in this ultra-high-concept political thriller depicting the standoff between the U.S. administration and Osama bin Laden. Script by Tom Clancy. The curious conceit: the two opposing sides are played by, respectively, the classic mid-80s NBA rivals Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar plays bin Laden, with Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Byron Scott, Michael Cooper, and Kurt Rambis as various of his underlings and Taliban protectors. The American side, meanwhile, is led by Danny Ainge as President Bush, along with Larry Bird as Vice-President Cheney, Dennis Johnson as Secretary of State Colin Powell, Robert Parish as National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and Kevin McHale in a challenging dual role as Defense Secretary Dick Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Timothy Hutton makes an uncredited appearance as Bush’s Chief of Staff.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"This one is certainly a major risk on every conceivable level, but if it actually works… look out!"
TITLE: MEMENTO 2
CAST:
Guy Pearce, Robert De Niro, Chris Tucker, Joan Chen, Ben Gazzara
PLOT:
Amnesiac Pearce is again manipulated, this time by Osama bin Laden (de Niro), who calls him in his hotel room night after night, hinting that an international financial conspiracy based in the World Trade Center killed his wife. Thrilling sequences, in reverse time, showing Pearce’s struggle to remember what he is doing in the cabin of UA flight 11, and, later, negotiate the metal detectors at Logan airport. The film opens with FBI investigators finding Polaroids of box-cutters and piles of post-it notes in Arabic in an East Boston hotel. With Chris Tucker as Pearce’s true-believing Saudi accomplice, and Chen and Gazzara as horrified passengers who realize Pearce’s problem too late.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"Typical blockbuster scenario. The first movie gets the word-of-mouth sales, the second makes the money. Like Die Hard and First Blood. An inspired, chilling performance snaps De Niro’s losing streak. Look for a Hollywood heavyweight like Spielberg or De Palma take over directing reins from young turk Chris Nolan."
TITLE: AROUND THE WAY
CAST:
Ice Cube, DMX, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Salma Hayek, Craig T. Nelson, Ben Kingsley, Chris Tucker
PLOT:
South Central LA’s baddest street gang (Cube, DMX, Combs, et al) finds out that a group of Arab terrorists, led by the diabolical bald Kingsley, are living "around the way." When the gang finds out that the group is plotting to blow up LAX, they take matters into their own hands—getting help along the way from their old nemesis, retired anti-gang cop Nelson. The film ends in a thrilling drive-by scene in which Kingsley and his cold-blooded henchman Tucker are gunned down on the way to the bombing.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"Mario Van Peebles will want in on this movie and he won’t be able to get his foot in the door, that’s how hot this script will be. There’s already talk about legal problems surrounding the soundtrack rights."
TITLE: METTLE DETECTOR
CAST:
Janeane Garofalo, Ben Affleck, Albert Finney
PLOT:
Garofalo, an ex-FBI agent who had lost her badge in disgrace through a bureaucratic snafu that wasn’t her fault, now works as a rent-a-cop security guard at Boston’s Logan Airport. After the terrorist attacks, she thinks she recalls a passenger who had passed through her metal detector that morning from a terrorist case she worked on back with the bureau. She has much trouble convincing former colleague Ben Affleck—who still blames her for the death of his partner (Matt Damon in a flashback cameo) and is now heading the investigation—that her hunch is the key to uncovering the roots of the terrorist groups. Her father (Finney), a retired Pace University professor and former peace activist with whom she has a troubled but loving relationship, provides much needed guidance and moral support as she struggles to win her badge back and hunt down the culprits.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"I’ve heard Gus Van Sant and Sam Raimi’s names tossed around as possible directors for this one. Unfortunately, it could end up being trapped somewhere between a blockbuster and a quirky independent picture—a dangerous no-man’s land in today’s uncertain political and economic climate."
TITLE: SOUL SURVIVORS
CAST:
Whoopi Goldberg, Reese Witherspoon, Ted Danson
PLOT:
Pampered, arrogant businesswoman Witherspoon and her quietly submissive secretary (Goldberg) have never had much to say to one another—until they find themselves trapped in the World Trade Center in this improbable buddy picture. Witherspoon learns that her Ivy League education and social-climbing skills are of little help in a towering inferno just minutes away from crumbling to the ground, while Goldberg discovers that even her instinctive street smarts will not be enough to save her without a little from an unexpected new friend.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"This was already in development prior to the attacks, although then it was to be set in a Silicon Valley office park with the tentative title Dot-Bomb. Look for the implied lesbian tension between Goldberg and Witherspoon to be de-emphasized as the action is transplanted to the World Trade Center."
TITLE: SHORT CIRCUIT 3
CAST:
Fisher Stevens, Hugh Grant, Dan Aykroyd
PLOT:
Stevens reprises his role as the Pakistani tech weenie with the convenience store accent in this unlikely second sequel to the Steve Guttenberg/Ally Sheedy comedy. This time around, the wisecracking Johnny 5 robot (now outfitted with a self-contained atomic device) has fallen into the hands of Osama bin Laden and Stevens must bumble his way across the Afghan border and infiltrate Taliban headquarters in order to avert a nuclear catastrophe. He gets a little help along the way from a stammering wire-service photographer (Grant) and an Afghan War-era deep cover CIA agent (Aykroyd) who refuses to accept that the Cold War is over.
SID RUBIN’S TAKE:
"Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to be Hugh Grant’s agent if this mess actually gets released."