Frank or Francis (2013)

       

 

Charlie Kaufman's post

story

Charlie Kaufman has already lined up an impressive cast of actors for his wild new movie Frank or Francis — Steve Carell, Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, and Kevin Kline have long been attached to the project — and now he's added two name actresses, both of whom did some of their career-best work with a Kaufman script. Vulture hears that Kate Winslet and Catherine Keener have come aboard Frank or Francis; the former was nominated for an Oscar for the Kaufman-penned Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, while the latter got her first Oscar nod thanks to Kaufman's script for Being John Malkovich.

Both of those screenplays were directed by other people, but Kaufman will be helming his own work for Frank or Francis, a very meta musical comedy about a director (Carell) who becomes obsessed with the message board commenter (Black) disparaging his movies on a Hollywood website. And though Kaufman's script is positively scathing when it comes to the Academy Awards (Cage plays a washed-up actor who serves as the emcee of the event), we should note that with the new additions to his cast, he's now got an ensemble that includes three Oscar winners and can boast a bounty of eleven total nominations. Not bad!


Being a fan of Kate Winslet, Catherine Keener, Nicholas Cage and Charlie Kaufman (Steve Carell, Kevin Kline and Jack Black too), I guess by default, I'm going to be pretty excited about this. I imagine some others will as well.

Unless the *musical* element to this, ruins it. For some reason, I wonder if even Charlie Kaufman could ruin something with that factor. Or maybe it could be OVER-cast? But my belief/faith in Kaufman still holds my optimism about this movie right now.