Hotness alert! Is this gonna be like, “The Full Monty,” only much more foul, odious and cinematically dyslexic? Tony Scott, the ADD, ritalin-deficient director behind filmic follies like “Domino” and “Deja Vu” has attached himself to direct a project based on the life of Steve Banerjee, the man who created the idea of male Chippendales strippers.
We know next to nothing about Banerjee’s life (suurrrrre we don’t), but according to Variety, his life was “consumed by excess and competition when the male strip clubs became a phenomenon in the 1980s.”
The Scott-Free production company of Tony and Ridley Scott is producing. Apparently the tone of the picture will be closer to “True Romance,” than any of Scott’s recent work and while that sounds great, ‘Romance’ is one of his last truly great pictures, we’re not sure this filmmaker can do anything but his autistic form of cinematic that includes stylistic tics and tricks vomited all over the screen in a seemingly haphazard manner.
But the story does sound rather awesome and probably a good vehicle for any male actor. Evidently Banerjee, starting out pumping gas in California, then ran an L.A. nightclub, became rich when his Chippendales idea too off and then became paranoid and delusional (copious amounts of cocaine no doubt) and eventually hired a hitman to kill the New York choreographer he hired to finesse his dancers when the negotiations went south. He apparently committed suicide while awaiting trial.
Yet if they are going to cast the film properly, not just any male actor is right for the part. Banerjee was an Indian immigrant, real name Somen Banerjee. How many lead Indian actors can pull this off. Dev Patel are you listening?
Is this next for Scott? Seems unlikely. The director also has “Unstoppable” filming now with Chris Pine and Denzel Washington, then a possible “Warriors” remake, “Hunger 2,” a Pancho Villa biopic, a Hell’s Angel project, “Potsdamer Platz,” “Emma’s War,” “Lucky Strike,” the list goes on and on. Yes, he’s as bad as his older brother Ridley, attaching himself to everything in sight.
This one does kind of sound potentially awesome and if any male director should push a sweaty, male homoerotic vision on audiences (presumably there must be some kind of angle like that, yes?), Tony Scott is probably best suited to do the job.
