Robert Mapplethorpe: Picture

EXCLUSIVE: Matt Smith, best known for playing Doctor Who in that iconic BBC series, is taking on another larger-than-life figure. He has landed the lead role as avant-garde photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in a biopic titled Mapplethorpe in the works from writer-director Ondi Timoner, the two-time Sundance-winning director whose 2015 pic Brand: A Second Coming opened SXSW last year. Girls regular Zosia Mamet has been cast to play Patti Smith, Mapplethorpe’s one-time lover and best friend.

Timoner, who won at Sundance for DIG in 2004 and We Live In Public in 2009, is also producing with Sirad Balducci and Eliza Dushku. The project has the backing of the Mapplethorpe Foundation, and a summer production start is in the works. CAA and UTA co-rep the project.

Deadline. 

Blimey.

I know actors act and all that, but casting the sexless Matt Smith as The King Of The Pervs seems most incongruous.

Perhaps the film will change the leather clubs to tweed and corduroy clubs?

PS Presumably this will be based on Patti Smith's acclaimed memoir, Just Kids.

If it only deals with their relationship we could - hilariously - see Mapplethorpe de-gayed and heterosexualised.

PPS Fagburn is rather looking forward to seeing World Of Wonder's documentary, Mapplethorpe: Look At The Pictures!

Morrissey: Tearoom Trade

From The Daily Star (not online).

Victoria Wood's Nice Cup Of Tea starts on BBC1 next Wednesday at 9pm.
Episode two, next Thursday, features Vicky talking about tea with Morrissey, Matt Smith and Graham Norton.
So probably one for The Gays, then.

PS Thanks to Darren. x

Update: Preview on Saturday Review, John Carey says Morrissey comes across as "obnoxious and egotistical". I find this very hard to believe...

Update2: And here they both are on that YouTube.

Update3: While we're here's Victoria Wood being rather Morrissey-esque on the lovely song Crush.

Christopher And His Kind: Sign Of The Times

"Congratulations to Matilda Walter of London N1 for a potentially award-winning complaint to Radio Times about BBC2's bookish docudrama Christopher and His Kind. Instead of merely voicing the usual criticisms (Doctor Who having gay sex, a rerun of Cabaret without tunes, etc), she homed in on a central but overlooked issue: faced with a publicity still of 'semi-naked actors Matt Smith and Douglas Booth' sunbathing on lakeside decking, 'I couldn't take my eye off the photo. But the more I ogled, the more disappointed I became – Phillips decking screws used in a drama set before 1933?'"

From The Guardian's Media Monkey blog.

Christopher And His Kind: Christopher Who?

I like the way the cover of the new Radio Times - "Your actual quality guide..." - operates on the assumption that no-one will know nor care who this Christopher Isherwood bloke is that Matt Smith's playing in this TV drama, only that the Dr gets "Naked" and "sexy"...

Update: On Friday, several of the broadsheets profiled Smith and/or Isherwood.
Best headline: 'Nudity, Nazis and the Doctor' - The Daily Mail, natch.
The Mail's best question: "So IS he worried some Doctor Who fans might be horrified when they see their hero playing a dissolute boulevardier?"
Translation: "So IS he worried some Doctor Who fans might be horrified when they see their hero playing a poof?"
"No, because it’s just pretend," Matt Smith explained helpfully.