When the recent announcement came that Dennis Quaid and Julianne Moore had been cast as Bill and Hillary Clinton, respectively, in The Special Relationship, Peter Morgan’s third film involving the Premiership of Tony Blair (played once again by Michael Sheen, who previously portrayed the former British Prime Minister in the Morgan-scripted films The Deal and The Queen), many of us began wondering if Monica Lewinsky would appear as a character, and if so, who would play her. Anne Thompson even provided an hilariously implicit visual aid for why Anne Hathaway would be great for the part.

Unfortunately, it’s been revealed that Lewinsky will only be included in the made-for-HBO film via archival footage. But that isn’t going to stop us from imagining who should have been cast in Morgan’s film had he decided to focus more directly on the Lewinsky scandal. Because we’d all much rather see that film, right? And although a low-budget depiction of the affair, titled The Blue Dress, is already in the works, it certainly won’t be as much fun as a high-profile picture featuring big stars as the infamous figures involved with the scandal.

So, we’ve cast the second-term Clinton movie we’d prefer be made. And as always we welcome you to suggest your own casting ideas — whether to substitute for those we’ve selected or to play characters we’ve forgotten — in the comments.
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• At least three SpoutBlog commenters will be happy to learn that Notorious screenwriter Cheo Hodari Coker is next adapting Bill Adler’s book on Run DMC, Tougher Than Leather. Two weeks ago, when I responded to the Biggie Smalls biopic with a list of 5 Dead Rappers Who Need a Biopic, I excluded Run DMC’s Jam Master Jay on account he was a DJ, not a rapper. But SpoutBlog readers nevertheless pointed out my error and suggested he and his group get a biopic anyway.
• Another screenwriter goes from one bio to another: A Mighty Heart scribe John Orloff is next scripting the Ian Fleming film Fleming.
• Two of this year’s Oscar nominees are teaming up for a movie that certainly won’t garner them future Academy attention: Slumdog Millionaire scribe Simon Beaufoy will rewrite the existing draft of the Amy Adams vehicle Leap Day, a lame-sounding romantic comedy that should appropriately only play in theaters on February 29, 2012 and then disappear for at least four years.
• Who knew Bicycle Thieves screenwriter Suso D’Amico is still alive? The 94-year-old Oscar-nominee will receive the WGA’s inaugural Jean Renoir Award next month and will be celebrated at the WGA Awards, held February 7. Thank goodness she can finally belong to a club that would honor Diablo Cody before recognizing one of the greatest female screenwriters of all time.
• Twenty years late, Ron Howard’s Parenthood is being adapted into an hour-long TV series for NBC. The network previously aired a short-lived TV version of the film in 1990 (it starred a young Leonardo DiCaprio in the young Joaquin Phoenix role), but this new show will have more time to focus on parenting challenges in “this post-Facebook, post-iPod world.”
• If there are any big Chronicles of Narnia fans left out there, you’re going to get your third movie after all.

This weekend’s box office is almost sure to go to Notorious, Fox Searchlight’s much-anticipated biopic about rapper Biggie Smalls (aka The Notorious B.I.G.; aka Big Poppa; aka Christopher Wallace), who tragically met his end 12 years ago in a controversial shooting. So far, the reviews are mostly favorable, though even a 0% score on RottenTomatoes.com couldn’t keep people away from this film. Fans aren’t likely to learn anything new about the hip-hop star, and they sure won’t gain any fresh revelations regarding the mysterious circumstances behind Biggie’s death, but they’ll definitely enjoy seeing the icon portrayed on the big screen (partly by his own look-alike son, Christopher Jordan Wallace). Like Newsweek critic Allison Samuels, many moviegoers will feel like they’re “attending a 10-year high-school reunion and reliving the good old days.”

And with the success of Notorious, both Hollywood and hip-hop fans will probably be begging for more. So, in anticipation of the potential copycats, and in hope for the best, we’ve selected five deceased rappers who are also worthy of the biopic treatment.
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Who would you rather hear sing Etta James’ signature tunes, the real deal or Beyonce Knowles? If you prefer the latter, then you’ll want to see Cadillac Records and even buy the film’s soundtrack, both of which feature Beyonce performing a few of James’ songs, including a nearly spot-on copy of “At Last” (listen to it here). Other actors in the film (and on the soundtrack) who do their own singing while portraying legendary music artists include Jeffrey Wright (as Muddy Waters), Mos Def (Chuck Berry) and Columbus Short (Little Walter).

It’s a strange idea to pay tribute to a singer with a biopic or ensemble music historical and then replace that singer’s voice with another, more amateur vocalist. Yet Hollywood does it all the time and, surprisingly, the new performances usually turn out pretty good. Just listen to the following nine actors and actresses who managed to do justice to the artist they were portraying.
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• Paul Schrader is reportedly done with Hollywood. His next film will be a Bollywood production titled Extreme City. The action pic will be a cross-cultural story, though probably more Bollywood-style than Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire; it won’t be a masala film but is likely to have a few more musical numbers.
• Universal is producing a French-language biopic of Serge Gainsbourg, which will neither be animated in claymation nor with Thunderbird-like puppets, despite what you might suspect after seeing Variety’s choice of photo. It will instead star real people, including Laetitia Casta, who is to portray Brigitte Bardot.
• Lionsgate has acquired the LeBron James doc More Than a Game, which will be released next fall accompanied by marketing tie-ins from Nike, Coca-Cola, State Farm and the NBA.
• In a much more respectable marketing tie-in, The Soloist has been connected to a food drive called Feed the Need, which will collect 1 million pounds of food by December 15 — four months before the film opens.
• The moviegoing demographics for this week’s “stuffed” Thanksgiving schedule are to be as follows: older woman to Australia; younger women to Four Christmases; youngest women/girls to Twilight; all men to Transporter 3; kids to Bolt. And some lucky people in 19 cities who don’t mind sold out shows will go see Milk.

The Gus Van Sant-directed, Sean Penn starring Harvey Milk biopic Milk opens next week, and it’s already generating controversy, especially in California in the wake of the Prop 8 debacle. Penn is certainly no stranger to playing politicians in the limelight; his Willie Stark character in All The King’s Men was loosely based on Governor Huey Long of Louisiana. While we’ve had a slew of movies about fictional presidents and politicians, we’d like to see more biopics based on some of the larger than life characters who have dominated the political world. From Rahm Emanuel to Pat Buchanan, here’s a look at a handful of political firecrackers who deserve their own Oscar-baiting biopic.

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• David Benioff will adapt Charles Cross’ Kurt Cobain bio Heavier Than Heaven for a pic for Universal. Courtney Love and her lawyer, Howard Weitzman, will executive produce. Nikki Finke quickly railed against Love’s involvement, saying that Universal cannot “expect truthfulness” from a biopic with the backing of Cobain’s controversial widow. “This movie is gonna get crucified by critics, audiences and Nirvana fans just by involving Courtney,” Finke predicts, implying that only a Courtney-bashing Cobain biopic could give the fans the “truthfulness” they apparently require.
• Michael Bay’s production company has been working on a remake of The Birds for at least two and a half years; Naomi Watts has been attached for at least a year. So I guess the kernel of news in this story is the fact that Martin Campbell will direct, and Universal has no plans to rush the film into production before the various labor strikes commence.
• Roger Ebert will be present to accept a tribute at the Gotham Awards in Brooklyn next month. It will mark his second public appearance since falling ill in mid-2006, after his own Overlooked Film Festival earlier this year (although I did see him in screening-hopping in Toronto).

Ian Curtis (Sam Riley) is about 18. He lives with his parents in Macclesfield, England, in a massive suburban housing complex with rounded safety windows that look like 1960s TV screens. He goes to school, but sits through his classes in a near fugue state. One day he brings home a vinyl copy of Aladdin Sane, which he listens to whilst wearing a fur coat over his bare chest, and simultaneously smoking and applying eyeliner. In the middle of this ritual, a friend comes over with a girl. The girl and Ian lock eyes in Ian’s bedroom mirror while she’s making out with his friend. After the girl and the friend leave, Ian sings along with David Bowie and plots stardom, imagining himself the toast of New York’s Warhol-centric counterculture. A star is born … and doomed.

Anton Corbijn’s Control smashes the music biopic mold by portraying the star at its center not as a mythological creature, but as a real-life, fucked-up kid in over his head. The Joy Division frontman’s talent doesn’t drop out of the sky; it’s something he keeps to himself until, after enough practice in front of the mirror, he’s sure he’s got it right. Likewise, his tragedies are almost entirely of his own doing, born from a borderline pathological desire to seize control of himself and the world around him, and exacerbated by his immature inability to do so. Particularly in the balance it finds between transcendence and dread in suburban family life, Control has a lot more in common with the British realism of the films of Mike Leigh than it does with even the recent wave of rock-star-as-antihero pics like Walk the Line. Corbijn’s actors, particularly Riley, hauntingly recreate the band’s image and sound, but the director is really only concerned with the milestones of the band’s career in so far as they give him an opportunity to talk about Curtis’ personal struggles.

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• The lineup boasted a wealth of warmed-over Hollywood pics (1408, Planet Terror), but the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival went this weekend to Masahiro Kobayashi’s controversial drama, The Rebirth. The Hollywood Reporter’s Eric J. Lyman called the film “cerebral and weighty … one of the most talked about films of the festival, but it was not without its detractors, who were turned off by the film’s deliberately repetitive construction.”
• Millennium Films, the company that’s currently working on bringing the Rambo series back from the dead, will next concentrate on resurrecting the Conan series.  They’re planning “multiple pictures”, the first of which will go into production next spring.
• Sean P. Combs Esq. has signed on to exec produce that Biggie Smalls biopic.
• Ever hear of Movie Gallery? Yeah, that’s part of the problem. The long-shot competitor to Netflix and Blockbuster says it still hopes to launch DVD-by-mail and video-on-demand services within the next six months, despite admitting “substantial doubt as to our ability to continue” operating.

Item 1: Darby Crash, Lorna Doom and the rest of The Germs, playing a show and talking about why it’s nearly impossible for them to book shows, in a segment from Penelope Spheeris’ The Decline of Western Civilization.

Item 2: Shane West, who plays Crash in the film What We Do Is Secret, playing a show in character and talking to a model about what it’s been like to tour with three-quarters of the band, and Bijou Phillips talking about how Lorna Doom feels about watching her play her.

Discuss.