A lot of people want to see Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm jump into the lead of a big studio tentpole; the clamors for him to head up Green Lantern continue, despite the fact that he’s far older than Warner Brothers wants.
But screw defending the Earth; he’ll defend Allen Ginsberg instead*.
Hamm has joined Howl, the picture about the obscenity trial focusing on the poem Howl, by Ginsberg. He’ll play defense attorney Jake Ehrlich, one of the biggest lawyers of the century. He defended Billy Holliday (heroin possession), Errol Flynn (divorce), Howard Hughes (business), Caryl Chessman (rape) and Sally Rand (indecent exposure) and was the basis for Perry Mason.
*In reality, Ehrlich didn’t actually defend Ginsberg; his primary client was Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published and sold Howl at City Lights Books in San Francisco.