Former "Taxi" star Andy Kaufman has gone from laugh track to the fast track. Days after Universal and Jersey Films received the first draft of a Kaufman biopic by screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the studio has greenlit the film for a summer start with director Milos Forman ready to make it his next project.
Forman will begin casting the film shortly, and the A-list of contenders who've shown interest in the project and working with the two-time Oscar winning director includes Jim Carrey, Nicolas Cage, Tom Hanks, John Cusack and Edward Norton. Much will depend on availability, since the biopic should be in production by summer.
The film's being called "Man in the Moon" after the hit song R.E.M. wrote and recorded about Kaufman. The sudden surge of activity and unexpected delay of "Little Black Book," the comedy expected to be Forman's next U film, came about because of the quality of the script by Alexander and Karaszewski, who've become specialists in turning pop culture oddballs like Ed Wood and Larry Flynt into movie heroes.
Kaufman is at least as offbeat as their previous efforts. The comic grew from an Elvis Presley impersonation to a comic who took some of the most bizarre chances since Lenny Bruce. Kaufman specialized in creating scenarios which even his close friends couldn't determine were jokes or serious passions. That included Tony Clifton, an abusive lounge singer persona whom Kaufman maintained wasn't really him, but whose taunting left audiences squirming.
It also included an infatuation with wrestling that left Kaufman in a neck brace when a pro grappler pummeled him and tossed the comic on his head because the wrestler felt Kaufman was ridiculing his "sport." When Kaufman came down with the lung cancer that killed him in 1984 at the age of 33, many didn't believe him and thought it was his new act.
Jersey Films' Danny DeVito, who played the mental misfit Martini in Forman's 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," became a close friend of Kaufman when they starred together in the TV series "Taxi" and put the film together after Forman sparked to Kaufman stories DeVito told him at a party several years ago. Forman enlisted the writers, who'd just worked for him on "The People vs. Larry Flynt."
The major characters are Kaufman, his best friend Bob Zmuda and George Shapiro, Kaufman's manager and an executive producer of "Seinfeld." DeVito will star in the movie as Shapiro, and he'll produce with Jersey partners Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher. The project's being shepherded by U's Marc Platt and Kevin Misher.
CATE ON HOT "TIN" ROOF: Australian actress Cate Branchett, who is drawing raves co-starring alongside Ralph Fiennes in "Oscar and Lucinda," has just gotten the female lead in "Pushing Tin," the Fox 2000 comedy about air traffic controllers, which Mike Newell directs.
Branchett plays the Long Island housewife married to John Cusack, who becomes a pivotal point in a macho duel he has with Billy Bob Thornton, who plays another air traffic controller. Branchett's repped by William Morris's Hylda Queally and Peter Levine. Her Australian-based rep is Robin Gardiner.
KEEPING HIS DAY JOB: Good thing New York City transit cop and sitcom star wannabe John DiResta kept his day job. DiResta, who last year signed a $600,000 deal with ABC and Disney to turn his unusual life into a primetime sitcom with himself as the star, is now doing the series pilot for Paramount and UPN after the promising concept was essentially orphaned by the Alphabet web.
The son of a fireman who's a 10-year vet on the force, DiResta drew notice for his one-man Off Broadway show "Beat: A Subway Cop's Comedy," which he performs eight times a week when he's not patrolling the subways. Several studios and networks bid on him, but he chose ABC and Disney last March.
Back then, he told Dish he'd keep his job until he found out whether he was going to become the most radical TV transformation since Roseanne went from housewife to TV superstar. At the time, DiResta said he never wanted to be a transit cop and seemed tired of escorting unbathed homeless dwellers out of subway stations and into shelters, talking about how they'd have to open all the windows in the truck when a "stinker" climbed aboard.
DiResta might well be left feeling that stench was rivaled by the way he was ultimately treated by ABC and Disney. His deal came from the passion shown by former Disney exec Dean Valentine, and when the exec moved to UPN, ABC let it languish. But at the urging of DiResta's UTA reps, Valentine came to the rescue, enlisting Paramount to step in and repay ABC and Disney the whole $600,000.
While it's not uncommon for a studio to switch networks on a sitcom -- ABC let "3rd Rock From the Sun" slip away to NBC -- switching both studio and network is nearly unheard of, and this deal is especially unusual because there's only about three months left on it.
Valentine could have let it lapse and make a new deal with DiResta, but Valentine wanted it for the fall schedule. That means DiResta will be out of sitcom limbo shortly as Matt Goldman ("Working") hurries to turn a treatment into a pilot, and DiResta finds out soon whether he can hang up his badge for good, after all.
"BASIC" GETS ON TRACK: Amid unfounded rumors of megabuck deals on United Artists' sequel to the steamy international smash "Basic Instinct," Dish hears that the project is finally moving forward. Original scribe Joe Eszterhas won't be back, and neither will Michael Douglas, who played Nick, the cop taunted by icepick-wielding sociopath Catherine Trammel. Script is being written by Henry Bean and Leora Barish, whose credits include "Internal Affairs."
The storyline focuses on a new murderous adventure for Trammel, the author/killer who moves from San Francisco to find new prey. The film's being written squarely in hopes that Sharon Stone will return as Catherine, the role that launched her as an international star.
While there were wild reports she was signing a deal worth $16 million, Dish hears that no money has been discussed. She's not at all committed to returning, and will wait to see the script before anything really happens.
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