Competing projects are a common occurrence in Hollywood. In the recent past, dueling killer asteroid, killer volcano and killer Truman Capote movies have all jostled for box office superiority. Now, we seem to have dueling Linda Lovelace flicks. (And, yes, I made up the "killer" part of the Truman Capote flicks, but wouldn't that have been awesome?)
It was announced yesterday that the lovely Amanda Seyfried will be bringing her soulful gaze and A-list esteem to bare bear in Lovelace, a film about the star of the infamous 1972 porn flick, Deep Throat. And, no, this is in no way connected to Inferno, the Lovelace movie from which Lindsay Lohan was unceremoniously fired a while back.
Of the two projects, Lovelace is shaping up to be the classier film. It is being directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, the team responsible for the highly regarded documentaries Where Are We?, The Celluloid Closet and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, which won the Academy Award in 1989. Their documentarian's eye should well serve a film that could easily veer into highly smarmy and exploitative territory...not that there's anything wrong with that. But there's smarmy and exploitative, and there's Inferno, which is reportedly pretty skeevy.
Lovelace is being written by Andy Bellin (Trust) and W. Merritt Johnson (Temple Grandin), based on The Complete Linda Lovelace by Eric Danville. Also, besides snagging Seyfried for the lead, Peter Sarsgaard is being courted to co-star as Lovelace's abusive husband, Chuck Traynor. Previous contenders for the leads in this project were Olivia Wilde and James Franco.
Conversely, Inferno is being written and directed by Matthew Wilder, whose only previous flick was 2008's Your Name Here, a poorly received thinly veiled take on the life of Philip K. Dick. Talk has been that the only reason Wilder originally cast the needy Lohan was to gain publicity for the smarmy amd exploitative Inferno. After gaining a little heat, he cast her aside and replaced her with…Malin Ackerman? Huh? Also appearing is Sasha Grey, who seems like a better fit for the lead given that she has first-hand experience in the adult industry.
According to those who've read it, Wilder's script is filled with intense scenes of sexual abuse, degradation, bestiality as well as howling dialogue that Ackerman will likely have a hard time selling effectively. To be fair, I've also heard that while Inferno is indeed tough material, it's also a good script. Even Jezebel said, "The script is actually incredibly well-written. If handled properly, it could be a sex/drugs/violence retro classic."
We won't know for sure until the films hit the theater, but I'm betting Lovelace will be the Armageddon to Inferno ’s Deep Impact, though I doubt either will blow up at the box office.
What's bizarre about this is that Seyfried is a dead ringer for a young Marilyn Chambers, but looks nothing like Linda Lovelace. She's a great actress, but somebody like Kristen Stewart or Kristen Bell would bear much more of a likeness to Linda.
