All The Right Moves

BRAD PITT

This thirtyish actor has made two films that were ideal roles for him: the larcenous pickup in Thelma & Louise, and the self-destructive golden boy in A River Runs Through It. Those two roles, plus his disastrous turn in the wildly ill-chosen Kalifornia, suggest three things about an ideal role for him. One: he's a glorious-looking movie star who should confine his most unconventional impulses to cool cameos like the hilarious one he did in True Romance. Two: he wears clothes so well it's a crime for him to play badly dressed characters. Three: he's so sexy and looks so good with his clothes off it's a crime for him to play characters who never find themselves unclad in bed. Now, how can these not-very-constricting parameters be met in a film that still allows him room to move? Well, high up on the list of films that should never, ever be remade, there's Sullivan's Travels, a film written expressly to be played by the incomparably easy-to-take Joel McCrea. But theoretically speaking, it could be done. Just as Joel McCrea embodied the clean looks and inner decency of the '40s, and made acting look effortless, Brad Pitt embodies the Bruce Weber looks and self-effacing self-involvement of the '90s and makes acting look effortless. Thematically, the rest of the film translates easily into our era: Sullivan's Travels is about a hugely successful director of film comedies who, because he's living through, though not experiencing, the Great Depression, gets it in his none-too-profound head that he should make serious movies on tragic topics. When his greedy producers, who quake at the thought of having their cash cow get a conscience, point out he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has never known anything but success--and hence is not in a position to make films about suffering--he sets out on the road disguised as a bum (read: homeless man) to have the experiences that will turn him into an important director. Pitt would bring the same foundation of likability and low-key sexiness to Sullivan that McCrea did--and he's already a proven comedian on screen. He'd also be able to poke fun at his own God-given lightweightedness on-screen while proving, as McCrea did, that there's plenty going on beneath that facade. In the scenes where Sullivan accidentally gets what he's looking for and is sent to a prison work camp, Pitt would even have the opportunity to indulge in the grunginess that, judging from Kalifornia and True Romance, he feels compelled to pursue. But after all of that, he would be returned to the gorgeous, spiffed-up girl-getting ending his ideal role demands.

JULIA ROBERTS

The conundrum of performers' lives is such that on their way up, they dream of somehow getting a movie role that will forever identify them in the minds of the public--for even wannabe actors know this is the timeworn process that "makes" stars, from Mary Pickford to Sharon Stone--yet if they're actually fortunate enough to have this occur, they then openly deride "typecasting" and wish to destroy the very identification the public has made between them and their signature role. 'Twas ever thus, so why should Julia Roberts be any different? Since becoming a bonafide star in Pretty Woman, Roberts has sought to establish herself not as the light-comedy champ she appeared she might become, but instead as, ho-hum, an "actress"--and she's only succeeded at establishing how very similar she seems from film to film, regardless of the part. Tellingly, Roberts has never again been as good on-screen as she was in Pretty Woman, so we wonder why she can't just accept the fact that her tough-talking, heart-melting hooker is the role she's going to be remembered for, and thus face the music to make the sequel virtually every moviegoer everywhere would pay to see, Another Pretty Woman. As for the plot, we're here to offer two plausible scenarios--plausible, that is, by the standards of Hollywood sequels. In one, the audience would briefly glimpse Roberts and Richard Gere enjoying the bliss of wealth and wedlock before Gere is suddenly struck penniless and thus suffers a complete breakdown, forcing Roberts to return to the streets to earn another fortune for the couple to live on. As this means a literal remake of the first movie's plot machinations, someone else would have to be cast in the princely businessman role Gere played in the original (Mel Gibson, maybe?) who, in this installment, not only takes a shine to our Cinderella, but also selflessly helps her return to Gere by the finale (which would find Gere completely recovered once his bank balance is restored). A happy ending, no? Our other scenario finds Roberts happily wed to Gere but tired of appearing on his arm at fundraisers, so--just for the fun of it!--she starts up her own business without telling Gere and soon becomes a Beverly Hills madam not unlike Heidi Fleiss. When Roberts, like Fleiss, becomes headline news in a national scandal, Gere's love for her is put to the test, but--as is always true in movies like this--love conquers all. Hey, if someone as savvy about their film career as Barbra Streisand can find time to make a sequel to Funny Girl, we don't see why Roberts can't throw a sop to her fans and make another Another Pretty Woman every few years--if only so that once in a while she can take on a role she's suited for. Imagine it: Roberts at 45, doing Yet Another Pretty Woman! with gray streaks in her hair. Julia, we're there.

KEANU REEVES

This actor has already had two perfect-fit roles: the Generation X adolescent in 1986's River's Edge, and the good-humored airhead Ted in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Since then he's grown up and fared better and worse in roles that were not nearly such bull's-eyes. Last year's Much Ado About Nothing, however, was an interesting stepping stone for Reeves--not because he came off as a born Bardist, but because he was such a natural villain. Now, Reeves is too much a movie star to make a steady diet of bad dudes, but any ideal character for him would be one that included a measure of darkness. If James Ellroy's long-optioned, never-filmed triple-noir The Black Dahlia ever gets to the big screen, the part of the dubious protagonist, cop Bucky Bleichert, could be fashioned to Reeves's strengths. As Bleichert, Reeves would be able to scheme, obsess, seethe and screw up, all of which he does well. Granted, a good deal of Bleichert, as written, doesn't suit Reeves. But Ellroy's story about the gruesome, real-life, late '40s unsolved murder of a beautiful, trick-turning screen hopeful is so complicated that it would take a substantial makeover to give it commercial potential anyway, and it's so dark that, even after the streamlining, an appealing young star would have to be cast to make it viable. The tinkering could just as well be designed to accommodate Reeves. It's well within Reeves's range to suggest that underneath the handsome, mask-like exterior he would provide for Bleichert, lie the erotic kinks that fuel this young ambitious cop's obsession with the murder and its victim. Reeves is not the kind of actor who can fill out an underwritten, middle-of-the-road Hollywood cop character--which is what he tried to do in the dismal, though fun, Point Break. He is the kind of actor who can effortlessly tamp down well- written dysfunctionals-with-saving-graces (as in River's Edge), and that's exactly what Ellroy's brilliant creation Bleichert is. Moreover, one of the reasons Bleichert would be an ideal role for Reeves is that it would allow him to play with Ellroy's hardball dialogue, which he's in desperate need of demonstrating the ability to do after all the arch period cadences he's struggled with of late.

LARA FLYNN BOYLE

In another era, Lara Flynn Boyle would have enjoyed a long, sexy screen career--the studio system, in its noir heyday, knew just what to make of long-legged, cool-blooded comers with Boyle's flinty beauty. Her inexpressive face would have been perfect to play one villainous vixen after another. Unfortunately, that deadpan mug--whether Boyle's cast as a "Twin Peaks" slice o' pie, a Mobsters moll, a Temptress, or Rookie's nookie--is not treated as the plus it might be, and so does not come off as an asset. Unless someone steps up soon with a role that could make the most of this seeming deficit, Boyle will doubtless pass out of feature films and into the yawning chasm of made-for-cable movies like so many Virginia Madsens before her. How to capitalize on what is, at best, a pleasant little talent and a face that suggests it has just been shot with Novocaine? How about a show biz bio-pic that requires such an expression-free visage, say Gene Tierney or Maria Montez? Sanity-challenged Tierney, one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the screen, lived her life as if she was planning to sell the rights to the movies. She romanced Prince Aly Khan, wed dress-designer Oleg Cassini, had a fling with JFK, and gave birth to a retarded daughter--caused, it's said, by a case of the German measles she contracted, while pregnant, from one of her own fans! Tierney eventually chucked her movie career to check herself into the Menninger Clinic. Then there's the saga of Maria Montez: yes, tiresome PC complaints would be raised if Boyle played the Dominican Republic-born Montez, but it's a comedy part worth taking the heat for. Like the more talented Mae West, Montez was a smart tart who played dumb, shrewdly promoting her own career with pithy remarks to the press ("Each time I look in mirror, I vant to scream I am so bee-oo-tiful"). A convent-schooled good-time gal, Montez married for money in order to travel to America so she could try her luck in Hollywood, where she was certain her blank beauty would mask her determination to make it as a star. She had that right, but she was blithely unaware that with no real job skills--she couldn't act a whit--it'd all be over just as quickly as it began. Hampered by a pronounced Spanish accent which typed her as an exotic off the Dorothy Lamour assembly line, Montez knew she'd get ahead by posing undraped, first in cheesecake photos, then on-screen in a string of Arabian Nights-style escapist hits that could only have happened during WWII. An ideal example of the star who's famous for being famous, Montez had nowhere for her one-note act to go once she'd achieved celebrityhood. Given that, it's probably just as well that she died of a heart attack while only 31--and really, what better way for any pinup gal to expire than in her bubble bath? The story of this supremely self-enchanted, self-exploiting icon could be a lively comedy about how screwy show biz is, and, as it's the tale of an actress who never appears to understand the havoc she causes, it's just the thing for the naturally immobile face of Boyle.

ROBIN WRIGHT

Okay, "lovely" is pretty much the word that comes to mind when one thinks--if one thinks--of Robin Wright. While there is more to this actress than meets the eye, she's frittering away what could be the best years of her career by giving terribly earnest performances in movies no one sees, like The Playboys and State of Grace. Of course, unless you're one of the three people who sat through Toys (we're the other two), you're going to have to take our word that Wright's performance in that monumental turkey was nothing short of a revelation. Working in a vacuum, she created a winning romantic-comedy character, a Southern belle whose honeyed accent, coltish hesitancy and dazzling smile all seemed somehow familiar, and here's why: Wright was, unless we're mistaken, doing a deft impersonation of Julia Roberts. It was more than a parlor trick, however; Wright used Roberts's trademarked ways better than Roberts does, and created a character more appealing than those Roberts herself has played. This reads not as petty theft but as a sure sign of an actress with more skills at her command than Roberts, and had Toys been a hit, Wright's irresistible comic turn might very well have made her a star. We think Wright deserves another chance to win audiences over with this performance--she could shine in a remake of Remember the Night, the 1940 heartrending romance in which lawyer Fred MacMurray falls for thief Barbara Stanwyck during a court's Christmas-week recess. The movie's Preston Sturges screenplay could scarcely be bettered, offering as it does tender, touching roles for its two stars; perhaps John Hughes, obsessed as he is with making films set during the holidays, could produce. Who to play the MacMurray role, you ask? How about Jeff Bridges? So much for Wright's shot at a sentimental classic--how about also casting her in a sexy melodrama about show biz, directed perhaps by Joel Schumacher or Adrian Lyne? It seems to us that there's a juicy movie deal in letting Wright play Roberts: since Roberts's life already reads like a trashy, bestselling Hollywood roman a clef, why not get, say, Jackie Collins to pen an "original" screenplay that's really just a thinly-veiled account of Roberts's many misadventures in the screen trade? Interestingly, Roberts--as a fictional character, you understand--seems not entirely unlike the Neely O'Hara character played by Patty Duke in that definitive movie a clef, Valley of the Dolls: a meteoric rise, love affairs with co-stars, whispered-about problems on the set, gossip about substance abuse, a headline-making marriage, disappearing off the screen, and, natch, a triumphant comeback. So get busy, Jackie! We've already found the actress who could play this role to a fare-thee-well. Now, wouldn't it be deliciously ironic if Wright, aping Roberts in either of these pictures, eclipsed her?

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Virginia Campbell and Edward Margulies are the Executive Editors of Movieline.

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