The biggest question isn’t who should direct a Frank Sinatra biopic, it’s who should star in it. And we may have gotten both answers in one fell swoop.
Martin Scorsese has signed on to direct Sinatra for Universal, a movie about the greatest person to ever come out of New Jersey. This leads one to wonder who will be playing the skinny, blue eyed singer, and that wondering leads one to think ‘Leonardo DiCaprio.’
Will that be the case? DiCaprio is Scorsese’s new DeNiro, for sure. And young Sinatra was a scrawny kid; it’s just when he got older that Blue Eyes thickened out. Could this be DiCaprio’s Raging Bull, a movie where he packs on a ton of weight?
That’s all speculation. The other area of speculation is how honest this film will be; one imagines that Scorsese would be against pulling punches (again, see Raging Bull), but since Universal has the full cooperation of Sinatra’s estate on this one, I have to imagine they won’t want Frank portrayed in too negative a light (Frank was a self-admitted manic-depressive. He wasn’t quite as self-admitted an organized crime associate).
The thing about Sinatra’s life is that there’s so much of it. Few men lived as large as Frank, and I wonder if Scorsese will focus on one aspect – the kid from Jersey, the teen idol, the movie star, the leader of the Rat Pack, the elder statesmen – or will simply try to cram as much as possible into two and a half hours. The answer lies in a script that’s being written by Phil Alden Robinson, who has been lying low for much of the 21st century.