The unusual producer pairing of Tom Hanks and Michael Stipe are teaming up with Barry Manilow’s manager Garry Kief to develop a romantic comedy based on the ’70s crooner’s Velveeta-like soft-pop back catalogue.
Despite coming from Hank’s company Playtone, which produced the music-movie megahit “Mamma Mia!” the film will not be a full-on musical, once again denying us the Chewbacca-like musical stylings of Pierce Brosnan.
Instead, the picture will feature “Love Actually”-style interlinking plotlines, involving Manilow fans traveling to Las Vegas, and the singer is expected to make a cameo. We’d rather that Barry Manilow was producing a romantic comedy based on the songs of Michael Stipe, personally, but there is at least some genuineness involved.
Stipe is a long-time appreciator and defender of of schmaltz and cornball, having infamously insisted for years that The Monkees were better than The Beatles, and if Burt Bacharach can retroactively be rechristened as cool by music snobs, surely the same should happen to Manilow who’s sublimely cheeseball tunes are equally inspired in their own manner. And Tom Hanks? He’s probably too nice of a guy to insist anything to the contrary.