It would be far too easy to read into the personal life of a movie star and pair it with the career choices they make at the time, but Brad Pitt gearing up a movie about depression following his very high profile split with Angelina Jolie certainly seems…coincidental. And to be real, Pitt snapped up the rights to this project a year ago. But nonetheless, it’s in the works and has a pretty high-profile screenwriter lined up for the script.
Pitt will star in “He Wanted The Moon,” an adaptation of the book by Mimi Baird, which tells the true story of her father Dr. Perry Baird, who researched manic depression, only to wind up succumbing to the illness himself. Here’s the book synopsis:
Texas-born and Harvard-educated, Dr. Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized multiple times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. He later received a lobotomy and died from a consequent seizure, his research incomplete, his achievements unrecognized.
Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had worked on throughout his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape. This remarkable document, reflecting periods of both manic exhilaration and clear-headed health, presents a startling portrait of a man who was a uniquely astute observer of his own condition, struggling with a disease for which there was no cure, racing against time to unlock the key to treatment before his illness became impossible to manage.
Fifty years after being told her father would forever be “ill” and “away,” Mimi Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. In time her fingers became stained with the lead of the pencil he had used to write his manuscript, as she devoted herself to understanding who he was, why he disappeared, and what legacy she had inherited. The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart.
It sounds like a powerful story, and who better to put into a script than Tony Kushner (“Angels In America,” “Munich,” “Lincoln“). No director is attached yet, and this one is still in development, so it could be some time before it gets in front of cameras, but let’s hope this one stays in the priority pile. [Deadline]
