Fresh from his exhausting stint doing not a goddamn thing
for the past decade (does The Good Shepherd count?) Joe Pesci
is about to live every boy’s dream: he’s going to play fuck/marry/kill with
Helen Mirren, Helen Mirren and some unknown actor, all within the confines of a
thinly fictionalized Mustang Ranch. Guess which one gets killed?
For the film, called Love Ranch, all the action will be
under the watchful eye of Mirren’s husband(s), director Taylor Hackford and his
beard. Hackford is directing from Mark Jacobson’s script, which is inspired by
Joe and Sally Conforte, who opened the Mustang Ranch as the first legal brothel
in Nevada in the ‘70s.
Things got a little more heavy when boxer Oscar Bonavena,
supposedly slipping it to Sally, was shot at the ranch in ’76. Bonavena isn’t cast yet — applicants must have a heavyweight physique, be willing to take verbal potshots for sporting a Beatles haircut and be willing to be fucked by Pesci rather than killed, should the f/m/k game swing an unexpected direction.
Says Hackford of Pesci, "He was the first person I had in
mind to play the husband, this former cab driver who dreamed of making
prostitution legal and carved out a tiny county and convinced the local
politicians. He’s playing the godfather of legalized prostitution, and it
convinced Joe to jump back into the fire." Nothing like a challenge to get a
guy back in the saddle.