One of the many things Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich did this week — instead of resigning from his position, as many people desired — was sign into law an increase on tax credits for films produced in his state. So, it should be only appropriate, and somewhat bittersweet, for the inevitable movie about his life and corruption hearings to be shot there.
Now that we’ve got a location for the film, it’s time to cast the players in Blogojevich’s scandalous tale. The Washington Post has already published a list of possible actors to portray the lead (John Travolta, Sean Astin, Gary Cole, Stephen Baldwin, Tom Cruise, Ray Liotta, Charlie Sheen, Mike Myers and Steve Carrell), but more difficult than casting Blogojevich (see our pick below) is determining what other significant figures should be prominently featured.
A straight biopic calls for way too many characters, so we’ve narrowed the film down to focus on just Blagojevich’s arrest and subsequent (forthcoming) trial. As always, if there’s another character to be included or another thespian suited to a role we’ve cast, chime in with a comment. Also, due to the fact that we’ve previously done posts about Barack Obama casting, let’s just assume that he’ll only be portrayed by a voice on the phone, a la Al Gore in Recount.
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I know I’m late, but I just finally saw the last of the Bourne movies this week, and I just had to comment on the casting of Albert Finney in The Bourne Ultimatum. Was it intentional to employ an actor that would be so confusing to viewers who would easily mistake him for Brian Cox, an actor who appeared in the first two films? It’s worth noting that our first look at Finney’s character is in a photograph, and so the ability to recognize him as a different actor than we’d previously seen in the series is less than if we were introduced to him in person.
As little as I figure out what purpose it serves, I think the lookalike casting had to have been a conscious decision. After all, who hasn’t mistaken the actors for one another at some point in time? When Cox first became a heavily used character actor, I mistook him for Finney. And according to a five-year-old Page Six write-up, Cox gets wrongly identified as Finney all the time (”But I’m much better looking,” he says). It wasn’t surprising that I have found countless reviews of The Bourne Ultimatum, as well as forum comments, that acknowledge the confusion regarding Finney’s appearance in the sequel. Unfortunately, I can’t find any discussion of the film that attempts to give a reason for the casting choice.
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