We’ve been pretty tough on Rod Lurie lately. News of his Straw Dogs remake hasn’t done anything to endear the filmmaker to any of us here. The guy makes a comment about how he’s going to approach the film’s pivotal rape scene and he might as well be on the front page of US Weekly in a threesome with Adam Shankman and Shawn Levy.
And this is a mere couple of months after his little-seen and underrated Deterrence made a spot on our CHUD Essentials list. I also name-dropped The Contender not long ago in a review, since it’s got some performances that do a lot to mitigate the lousy third act. (Coming soon from CHUD: www.thirdactrape.com. Get on board early. The new site’s going to be big.)
So which Rod Lurie is going to be making Nothing But The Truth, a thinly veiled fictionalization of New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s part of the Valerie Plame case? Will be be the filmmaker behind Deterrence, or the guy who (based on a few quotes) is putting a lot more of Nancy Reagan and Gloria Steinem into Straw Dogs than Sam Peckinpah?
Obviously I can’t predict that, but I might suggest that Lurie should just combine the two films. When she’s persecuted for outing a CIA agent, Judith Miller flees to a friend’s home in rural England, where she discovers that bad teeth and sexual excitement don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
I should mention that the reason for this article is that David Schwimmer has joined the cast as Jason Epstein, aka Mr Judith Miller. The rest of the cast is holding steady; Kate Beckinsale will possibly be quite out of her league as a version of Judith Miller, with supporting underwire appearances from Alan Alda, Vera Farmiga, Matt Dillon and Edie Falco.