You loved her in Grindhouse. Or did you? I loved Zoe Bell in Tarantino’s Death Proof, but a lot of people didn’t take to her untrained delivery — it wasn’t natural but awkward.
Now Bell’s been tapped to star in an as yet untitled picture by Marco Weber and Senator Entertainment, the US arm of the company that distributed Grindhouse in Germany. Weber came up with the story idea, about "a U.S. soldier adrift after returning home from a tour of duty in Iraq who decides to help a young girl in trouble."
It took seven years between the end of Vietnam and the screen opening of First Blood, so I’m very happy that this sort of film can get made while the war in question is still going on. See, we are learning from our mistakes.
You might want to petition Weber to hire a new writer, however. He’s currently got Sarah Thorp on board and behind the word processor. Thorp’s last produced script was the unabashed drivel Twisted. I don’t know the film’s rewrite history, so I can only speculate that Thorp’s pages were as bad as what ended up on screen. But I’m willing to do that, having also seen her earlier See Jane Run.
Bell will be trying to ditch her accent to play ‘merican. "This film is a big challenge for me, especially the American accent,
which I have to work on," she says. "But one thing is certain: I will be doing all my own stunts on the
film."
I’d say just write in a quarter page explaining how she moved from New Zealand to the states and be done with it. Yeah, I like Bell, but I doubt that mastering accents is her forte. Just give me an excuse to see her beating the hell out of North American scum, please, and the accent will be wholly unimportant.