09-10-2015, 03:39 AM
Jim DiEugenio Wrote:How about a little casting against type?
Jon Voight.
Although politically, he and Dulles are not that far apart.
Joe McBride should chime in on this, since very few people know more about movies than he does.
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Thank you kindly, Jim. I would have said Will Geer (as in EXECUTIVE
ACTION). He's playing H. L. Hunt, but maybe they were thinking of Allen Dulles as well. Wilford Brimley is still with us at age 81 and might be
perfect, with that faux avuncular charm. I hope Wilford is doing OK. And if Robert Redford can
be a twinkly Dan Rather in a movie that valorizes him, I guess he could do it with makeup and a pipe, mumbling his lines,
as long as they don't tell him he's supposed to be a villain. When James Caan
(not the sharpest tool in the toolbox; I worked with him) saw EL DORADO and realized he was funny, he asked Howard Hawks how that
happened, and Hawks said if I had told you to try to be funny, you wouldn't have been. Jon Voight is an interesting
choice (he's actually a right-winger and might get into the part), but he is terrible as FDR in the worst
movie I've ever seen, PEARL HARBOR, especially when he jumps to his feet at a cabinet meeting. He was
great in COMING HOME, though that was long ago. I like casting against type; it makes people think
and brings about unusual work. Sam Waterston (François Truffaut's favorite American actor) is sensationally good as Helms in
the NIXON director's cut. What a great sequence that is, the heart of the movie actually. And, of course,
Tony Hopkins can play anyone, as can Cate Blanchett.