Friday, July 29, 2011

OMGArmieHammerISTracyBacon

I've been trying to come up with the perfect cast for an imagined adaptation of my favorite book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for a couple of years now. I've got four of the five main roles locked in my mind. The one character I keep revising, however, is that of Tracy Bacon, the hunky, hulking paramour of one of the main protagonists, Sam Clay. The character is hard to cast simply because it requires an actor who is both an impressive physical specimen and a completely charming, softy romantic. You try thinking of an actor who fits both descriptions. It's a lot harder than you'd think! As you will see in that post I linked to earlier I originally came up with Kellan Lutz, who fit the role physically. But this was before I realize the dude can't act for shit. Shameless manwhore, yes. Thespian, not so much. Someone else recommended Chris Pine and I immediately fell in love with that suggestion. Okay, so Chris doesn't exactly have a towering presence, but he's built enough and this was summer of 2009 so I was riding on a wave of Star Trek love.

Pine has been my Tracy Bacon for two years now, but it was while flipping through Kavalier and Clay again awhile ago when I realized that after last year, we now have the perfect actor to play Tracy Bacon: Armie Hammer. I mean, think about it. He's got the tall and hulking part down (there's a reason JA at My New Plaid Pants refers to him as Six Foot Five Aryan God Armie Hammer), he is perfectly charming and adorable and, most importantly, he can act. Plus, we all know how much he loves mackin' on dudes after being cast in the new J. Edgar Hoover movie, and the Tracy Bacon role requires a bit of that. So, to sum everything up, Armie Hammer is perfect for this role and someone needs to write a miniseries treatment of this book. I will not stand for 600 pages of beautiful prose being condensed down into 120 minutes. Will not! Just think of all the Emmy's this shit would win just by default. Come on, HBO, get the ball rolling on this one. And while you're at it, make sure you cast Armie Hammer in a role he was born to play.

1 comment:

grubers said...

Armie Hammer is part Jewish.

Actors of fully Jewish background: Logan Lerman, Natalie Portman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mila Kunis, Bar Refaeli, James Wolk, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julian Morris, Adam Brody, Esti Ginzburg, Kat Dennings, Gabriel Macht, Erin Heatherton, Odeya Rush, Anton Yelchin, Paul Rudd, Scott Mechlowicz, Lisa Kudrow, Lizzy Caplan, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Gal Gadot, Debra Messing, Robert Kazinsky, Melanie Laurent, Shiri Appleby, Justin Bartha, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Margarita Levieva, Elizabeth Berkley, Halston Sage, Seth Gabel, Corey Stoll, Mia Kirshner, Alden Ehrenreich, Eric Balfour, Jason Isaacs, Jon Bernthal, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy.

Andrew Garfield and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are Jewish, too (though I don’t know if both of their parents are).

Actors with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Franco, James Franco, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Radcliffe, Alison Brie, Eva Green, Joaquin Phoenix, River Phoenix, Emmy Rossum, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Connelly, Sofia Black D’Elia, Nora Arnezeder, Goldie Hawn, Ginnifer Goodwin, Amanda Peet, Eric Dane, Jeremy Jordan, Joel Kinnaman, Ben Barnes, Patricia Arquette, Kyra Sedgwick, Dave Annable, Ryan Potter.

Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jews and/or identify as Jews: Ezra Miller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Nicola Peltz, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Winona Ryder, Michael Douglas, Ben Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nikki Reed, Zac Efron, Jonathan Keltz, Paul Newman.

Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised. Robert Downey, Jr. and Sean Penn were also born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. Armie Hammer and Chris Pine are part Jewish.

Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism: Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.