What is a voice with no power? (Part 2: Curious Incident movie)

Image courtesy of www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Hello again everyone, the name is Luca but you can call me Luca and welcome back to Red's One-Shot. The blog where I write down stuff and expect you to read it, but hey! Your life. You do what you want with it.

 

It has not been long since I posted, and I have regrets with how I spoke about the last post. It is a yabbering mess and it had no resolution to it, mainly because this is the second part and this will have a resolution and an overall message. Before I begin, like I said in my last post I said I would need as much help from you guys as humanly possible, but really, only if you personally cared for what I have to tell you.

 

As I start this post, it is after midnight on July 15th 2016 and I'm wide awake, pacing through my house whilst my parents are still asleep, wanting to begin writing on this and hopefully never get distracted. After reading this bit later on, my parents will probably be quite mad at me if my mum doesn't walk in at this moment after noticing my light is still on in my room.

 

So this is the most real I am ever going to get with you, I don't want fame. If any of this happens, I want to return to my life of obscurity and never believe I got gifted anything in life that I reckon should be well and truly earned. People who have come to read this, thank you all of you and I appreciate you all, and thank you to those who join me in this.

 

Back around last year, a friend of mine named Emma made me aware of a book and theatre show called 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time'. This being back in about February 2015, when I went to London with my college, and my parents had also made the trip to London incase I required any help with certain things. So the college trip was a Performing Arts trip and we went to see Odyssey in the Paper Cinema - which I only enjoyed due to seeing the cosmetics playing out in front of us - and also Memphis, which also plays into this slightly and is absolutely amazing.

 

My parents told me they were going to see Curious Incident, and I remember very distinctively how I recognised it when on the phone with my mum and I was like "Wait, my friend Emma told me about this".

 

So for you lot who are all like "What you on about mate?" in regards to Curious Incident, allow me to bring you up to speed. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is a 2003 best-selling-novel written by Mark Haddon, which - thanks to the Bing search engine for telling me this - has won accolades such as the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Waverton Good Read Award and the Costa Book of the Year. It was then adapted by Simon Stephens and Marianne Elliot for theatre, and won many awards including seven Olivier awards, and many more that I cannot list but I assure you, it won a LOT of awards.

 

As for what the story is about, it is focussed on 15-year old Christopher Boone, who is on the autistic spectrum and one night he discovers his neighbour's poodle named Wellington dead with a garden fork sticking out of him. This prompts Christopher to find out who killed his neighbour's dog, and whilst trying to find who killed Wellington, he discovers the answers to a secret that hits much more closer to home for him.

 

That is all I will tell you, and I can highly recommend this story for you.

 

I never want to milk this, but Curious Incident having a character with autism does hit it home for me and why I really like this story. I have autism myself, and reading the book as well as watching the theatre show, always made me notice parallels of my early life. Now I'm not naïve, I know this is not the first example of someone relating to something else, but I just thought I'd briefly talk about it so to solidify what I am attempting to do here.

 

After my friend Molly was kind enough to let me borrow her copy of Curious Incident, I saw the theatre show twice. Once with my friend Lauren, and the other with the college when we went back to London this February where we also saw Kinky Boots (That show is very enjoyable too, I recommend it). For the longest time now, I have been dreaming of seeing a Curious Incident movie made, and I have been constantly trying to get in touch with the right people.

 

For as long as I can remember back to knowing about this story, I was trying to contact whoever I could to see what I could do to get this movie off of the ground. I thought Working Title and Studiocanal would be the best choice to get this movie made, I got in touch and they never got back.

 

Reading up on Curious Incident's Wikipedia page, the rights were optioned by Warner Brothers and so I actually got in touch with Mark Haddon when asking about this, and he told me that WB had now bought the rights completely. With Warner Brothers having had the rights bought out back in 2011, they had tasked their Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves (Responsible for writing all the Harry Potter films with the exception of The Order of the Phoenix) and a many-time WB film producer David Heyman with the Curious Incident movie.

 

So for months, I was attempting to find the correct email addresses for anything Warner Brothers related, giving detailed reasoning for why I thought so-and-so should get cast as this character, who the director should be, who should score it, what time it should be released etc. and everytime, I wasted my typing and time as the person would just say "We are not the correct people you need to contact" rather than telling me who were the correct people so I was just at a dead end and was never told the way out of the maze and to this day, I'm still in this maze.

 

For reasons I shall explain later, I even have a friend who is associated with writer/director Matthew Vaughn (The man behind such masterpieces - and I mean that sincerely - as Kingsman, Eddie The Eagle, Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class among others) to try and get him onboard to perhaps have a hand in producing it. How I managed, I'd rather not say incase there are implications with our mutual friend, but now would be a good time to tell you who I have cast as the characters.

 

Oh by the way, I have recited this cast list in my head for months now and can list them off by heart. I have my reasons for why I reckon they should be cast and I'll tell you now why I believe Matthew Vaughn may have been interested in helping develop this project. For the lead character of Christopher, I have undoubtedly my favourite actor working right now, Taron Egerton.

 

Image courtesy of www.pintrest.com

Many of the people who know me in real life, know that I am a huge fan of Taron here. When I saw him in Kingsman: The Secret Service, I knew he would be going places immediately, and now having seen him play Eddie The Eagle, he has solidified what people suspected. So why do I think he should play Christopher in Curious Incident?

 

I reiterate from before, going from Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin to Michael 'Eddie The Eagle' Edwards is an incredible change and even his Eddie The Eagle co-star Hugh Jackman said "I do not know of any other actor in the world who can nail both of those roles", probably paraphrasing but it is definitely along those lines.

 

When I saw the stage show of Curious Incident, the way Christopher spoke was a very outward and direct way of speech (I suggest you look for a YT video of Curious Incident theatre show rehearsals with Christopher so you get what I mean). In my time around fellow autistic peers, that way of speaking was a lot more common than perhaps being a little bit quieter, and Taron has a very outward way of speech that I reckon would work to his advantage playing Christopher.

 

In Eddie The Eagle, the way Taron carried himself was almost 'chameleonic' if you could call it that. I just remember watching him walk over to see Hugh Jackman's character and I just laid back in my chair and said to myself "That is Christopher from Curious Incident".

 

Taron also has this ability to appear on screen and represent an age that can be so much far either younger or older than what he is. As of now, Egerton is 26 but in Kingsman I was convinced he was 17, and I reckon it will be a while before he starts to look much older so I reckon right now, he can be a more than convincing 15-year old character.

 

I know this is a bold claim, but I am absolutely convinced that Taron Egerton, will at least be nominated for an Academy Award for Curious Incident under the right direction and filmmakers. Infact, I'd hope I could see into the future just to find out who would be competing in the same category just so I could also say "He will win".

 

My aim was to always shoot for this movie after Taron had shot the Han Solo movie, but since he didn't get the Han Solo role (BS but oh well), more time for this I suppose!

 

Now for the next character, Christopher's father Ed. A hesitant and broken soul who whilst loves Christopher, he can get frustrated with him and his inability to communicate, so we need someone who is a suppressed and subtle actor, who can switch off and convey a real darkness to them but is not that too far out of the ordinary. That's why for Ed, I believe it should be Gary Oldman.



Image courtesy of www.wikipedia.org



Warner Brothers would love this casting, since Gary Oldman has been a many time associate to WB because of roles in franchises such as Sirius Black in Harry Potter and James Gordon in the Dark Knight Batman films. Plus it needs to be said, Oldman walks on that tightrope of being larger than life and down to earth, he masters that fine line in that he seems like a friendly next door neighbour.

But when you need him to be, he can amaze you all. Oldman has been labelled as perhaps the greatest living actor working today, and rightfully so I think, he brings the intensity and the normality needed to nail both a real character, and a caricature.

This is why I believe he could nail the role of Ed in a Curious Incident movie, because Ed is a reserved character who has two sides to him, that you as the reader or audience, can believe are not that far of a trait to be seen as inconsistent. You need to believe this character, you need to know someone like him in your regular British life to know that he is a very real character and that is something Gary Oldman has mastered beforehand.

Next we come to Christopher's mother Judy, who plays a huge role in the story. I was thinking of who to play her not long ago and I was always unsure about everyone I had thought of in the past before I - shamelessly - was 'Google'-ing Daniel Craig, and noticed who he is married to. I searched into her work, and was like "SHE IS PERFECT! I have found Judy for Curious Incident", and incase you have not guessed already, it is Rachel Weisz.



Image courtesy of www.imdb.com

Like Gary Oldman, Rachel Weisz has played many characters and all are very believable, and somewhat very typical, like you could meet them and they would not overwhelming. Weisz carries an incredible grace to her that is grounded in reality, again making a character very convincing.

 

In the story, Christopher has memories of his mother that are told throughout the narrative. We find out that unlike Ed, Judy doesn't have the patience with her son and buckles under the pressure, and I know Weisz is very outward with her emotions on screen. She starts alongside Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander in the movie 'The Light Between Oceans' and her character from what I've seen in the trailers, she has nailed the emotion to an incredible extent. (On another note, David Heyman produces this movie, he also produced another Taron Egerton film 'Testament Of Youth')

 

Weisz's incredible charisma to emit warmth, a gentle subtlety, normality and gracefulness can only be too perfect to match the memories that Christopher has for his mother. If she can do it, Rachel Weisz can do it in spades and then some!

 

Next up, Christopher's support assistant at his school, Siobhan, who teaches Christopher how society works, and how to behave in its complex guidelines. When I went to see the theatre show, I saw Siobhan depicted as a woman in her late 40's and whilst I never saw that as an incorrect manner to portray her, I thought that maybe have someone a bit younger, not too young but I'll explain my reasons. Anyway my pick for Siobhan is Joanna Page.

 

Image courtesy of www.thesun.co.uk

For those of you outside the UK who most likely won't know Joanna Page, her biggest role in an international movie role is probably in Love Actually as Martin Freeman's co-star in a movie in which they are performing sex scenes together. But her biggest role came in the form of one half of the titular characters in Gavin & Stacey, where Page portrays a very bubbly and lovely Stacey, who engages in a long distance relationship with Mathew Horne's Gavin.

I put some incredible thought into this because I actually was under the supervision of a support assistant named Sam for my three years in college. What I loved about working with Sam was that she was the first support assistant I had that embraced my quirks and made me feel at ease whilst getting me to focus as well, she knew when and when not to enforce anything onto me and as a result, I learned more and I benefitted a lot from being under her supervision.

She's probably reading this right now and is on a massive ego trip. I mean that all in good fun.

But Sam was the first person who supervised me who I consider a friend more than a support assistant, because me and her would often talk about movies, racing, video games, current events, everything. Because she was a lot closer to my generation, she and I could relate to a lot of things whilst also still being older enough to offer advice. This is why I have picked Joanna Page to play Siobhan.

Rather than being a figure of authority, having a support assistant in this scenario seeming more like a friend offers a much more interesting dynamic between them, and being closer in age only solidifies that. Plus also, Joanna Page being mostly famous for her role as a very warming and lovely individual, plays more into being the supportive and helpful hand that Siobhan plays for Christopher.

For the next character, we have Roger Shears, described as "Evil" by Ed, he left his wife prior to the story beginning. After seeing the stage show, I concluded that the person that plays him have a smooth but intense presence, an unsettling charisma and yet again, I have overused this word a lot now, subtlety. (Here's an idea, take a shot every time you see me use subtle or a variant of the word. You'll be knocked out cold long before you finish this post)

So for this role, I considered a lot of actors but the person I have gone with is Andrew Scott.

Image courtesy of www.walesonline.co.uk

We all know Scott for his role in BBC's Sherlock as Moriarty, which he does an incredible job at with his very funny quirks and plots to mess with people. My idea to cast him as Roger was sparked when seeing him in the latest Bond film Spectre, where he played Max Denbigh, a member of British parliament who is secretly an undercover member of the titular organisation.

 

Hopefully what I am about to say doesn't offend Andrew Scott, it's a more a credit to his acting ability but he has a very unsettling presence whilst also again, not seeming larger than life. Which given that I just said how over the top he is in Sherlock, is also a real credit to his acting ability.

 

Plus also, it would be a noteworthy fact to put on the trivia page of this movie, Christopher idolises Sherlock Holmes and it is mentioned throughout the story, and both Andrew Scott and another person who I shall get to, have played major characters in a Sherlock Holmes story.

 

Second to last character, Roger's ex-wife Eileen and the owner of Wellington the poodle who is killed at the beginning of the story. This one, I am unsure on because it was never to my knowledge, explicitly stated which race the character is, because in all the versions of the stage show I have seen, Eileen was black.

 

I have had a few people in mind, some black and some white. If the character was always black, I am going to cast a very talented black actress, Carmen Ejogo.

 

Image courtesy of www.twitter.com

First time I came across Ejogo was when she portrayed Loretta King to David Oyelowo's Martin Luther King in Selma. She is also appearing the new Harry Potter spin-off set of movies Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and from what little I have seen of her, I feel she is more than capable of taking on this character.

 

Eileen is constantly in the background and we never really see a lot of interactions with her, only mentioned through the character Ed. We could see more screen time for her depending on how Steve Kloves has written the screenplay, hopefully we can get to see a bit more of Eileen since Carmen Ejogo is such a magnetic presence on screen.

 

Last but not least, the elderly Mrs. Alexander and this pick not only is a casting, it's a reprising of this role. The person I have picked for Mrs. Alexander also played the character in a West End running of the show, and that person is Una Stubbs.

 

Image courtesy of www.allthetests.com



If you lot recognise Stubbs but don't know where from, she's mostly known for her role as the landlady Mrs. Hudson in the BBC Sherlock, now completing the two examples of Sherlock Holmes actors which I stated earlier on in the list.

 

Both of Una Stubbs' stated characters share a friendly and good natured attitude toward our unsociable main character, that being the titular character in BBC's Sherlock and Christopher in Curious Incident. Stubbs' very warming presence puts you at ease, like a very typical elder and since she has already had experience playing the role, it only makes sense.

 

Other major points I'd like to make, I have an idea of who I'd like to see direct the movie, Tom Hooper. Responsible for movies such as The King's Speech, Les Misérables and The Danish Girl, all of which are outstanding, and his directing style teamed with a script written by Steve Kloves could make for the same thing, or dare I say, will!

I even have an idea of who could score the film, I loved the soundtrack on The Martian and that was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams so I reckon he should do the score for the film. Maybe even an original song, by Birdy? Her songs are so emotionally riveting that I reckon it would make a great fit for Curious Incident.

Now for perhaps a compromise; Curious Incident will never make a hell of a lot of money, and WB are in a bit of a state after Batman V Superman underperformed so what I was thinking the following. I always wanted Working Title and Studiocanal to make the film since they have a way of making these films, and I know for a fact that WB have a great working relationship with these two studios.

Just last year, Warner Bros had a gangster film and WT/SC had a gangster film, and they were Black Mass with Johnny Depp and Legend with Tom Hardy respectively. This could be pure coincidence, I am not speaking on their behalf but both movies opened up in separate regions at the same time, with Black Mass making its US debut in the same month Legend was released in the UK, and vice versa.

Another example being when Working Title and Studiocanal financed and produced the Zac Efron-led film We Are Your Friends, Warner Bros distributed the film so what I am proposing is the following. Working Title and Studiocanal make the film, Warner Brothers distribute it.

So that's finally all I can say about these proposals I have for Curious Incident. Now I know fine well, I'm naïve as can be but I'm aware enough to know that movies are made to make money, I mean now that Pokémon Go has taken over the world, only now do movie companies really want to make a live action Pokémon movie.

This is where you all come in. If you personally want this to happen, we need to spread this as much as possible. I don't want the fame from this, I just want to see this movie happen because I reckon there is a lot that can be done here. But Curious Incident is not trending right now, this can change that.

Now to what I want to express to you all. My name is Luca and I have no power, I'm merely an atom of an atom in this world of many particles, but individually we may be weak, together we can be strong.

You lot deserve a voice. I remember in secondary school, I was asked "What do you want to do for your career" and at the time, I said "Car designer!" (Not my dream anymore) and then that was followed up by "Okay well you need to do something proper, what about working in a clothes shop?". I am not pulling your leg! I was told to stop thinking big and start thinking realistic, well to that I say, fuck all of it.

I may not have some kind of degree that gives me permission to do something that I could not do otherwise. I may just be some loser who wears the colour red and only leaves his house normally to collect food. I may not have the influence to decide for others. But that is not going to stop me no matter how ridiculous it may get and it should not stop you either.

If you have a dream, do not ever stop. Don't be discouraged, do not let anybody tell you it cannot be done.

I've just realised I sound like one of those Tumblr people with those black and white photos of post-it notes saying "Do not kill yourself. Not today, tomorrow or ever". Wow! Thank you. I had a shotgun between my teeth right this second, but now that I have seen this... I am going to do it anyway just to piss you off! (Joke credit to 'A Kind Ale War' on YouTube)

All jokes aside, I can only hope enough people get this going. I know I'm going to get people telling me I'm pathetic, and I've always discouraged myself from doing this before because "Why would they listen to me? Yeah, I've got a blog, therefore you should hire me even though someone's grandmother has a gardening blog".

Never give up everyone. Thank you so much for reading and again, I reiterate, if you personally care for this, spread it like wildfire and maybe the correct people will sit up and take notice.

So now it is about half past 2, and it's July 16th 2016. Don't worry, I took breaks from writing this, but all the time I was thinking, what to write next. I'm glancing outside my window and it's glorious outside, I'm hungry and I've just been watching one of my favourite YouTube gamers Broughy1322, and I'm nervous to see what comes of this.

I bid you farewell, so until we meet again, thank you all of you.
Luca