Quaid slithers into 'Iguana'; Hoch locked
In John Huston's adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play, Richard Burton played a clergyman defrocked because of a sex scandal, who takes a job as a tour guide in Mexico where he tries to get away from his weakness for women. But one tour on his bus includes a sexpot the same jail-bait age as the girl who ended his religious career.
Quaid will play Rev. Shannon, and Stark has several top actresses interested in the roles played by Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner and Sue Lyon.
The film will shoot near Puerta Vallarta, the setting of the original and whose inhabitants are expected to welcome Stark back for an encore. Still standing 35 years after the film's shooting is a statue of Huston and a plaque for Stark, who is called "El Padrone," or the godfather of Puerta Vallarta.
That's because the tourist site was an anonymous Mexican fishing village when Huston chose it as a shooting site. But when Burton took up with Elizabeth Taylor while she was still married to Eddie Fisher, the romance became a worldwide scandal. The press descended in droves to the site, so much so that Stark sent a famous telegram to the studio declaring there were more reporters than iguanas. The attention put the town on the map and established it as a tourist mecca.
Bohem, best known for large scale disaster pics "Daylight" and "Dante's Peak," has taken a detour, contemporizing the Anthony Veiller-Huston script and adding more elements of Williams' play to flesh out the female roles. Quaid, who has rekindled interest in his acting with the Initial Entertainment Group release "Savior," will next star for Oliver Stone as the aging quarterback in "Any Given Sunday." While he's got several projects on his dance card, he's expected to star in "Iguana" sometime next year. Quaid and Antonijevic are repped by ICM, Bohem by UTA.
REWARDS OF FAN MAIL: Danny Hoch, the theater performer whose one-man show "Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop" is winding up an L.A. run this week, is turning the show into an independent feature, and has a fan to thank for it. Hoch is an up and comer whose show originated Off Off Broadway and garnered a New York Drama Desk nomination. He's already turned one of the nine characters, a white wannabe rapper from Iowa named Flip, into the Fox Searchlight film "White Boys," and he has a role in Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line."
And it seemed that his one-man show was a cinch to set up as a film, with October poised to make it with Jonathan Demme's Clinica Estetica. He then watched as a group of directors including Darnell Martin and "American History X" helmer Tony Kaye surfaced and departed without the film ever getting going.
"I was at the end of my rope because October wouldn't do it without Demme's consent," Hoch said. He recalled getting a fan letter that he took the trouble to answer, from a pair of young producer wannabees. "I ended up calling the guy who wrote the letter, and told him about the problem and he said, 'How much money do you need.' Suddenly, we had a film with a much larger budget."
The fans turned out to be Will O'Neill and Michael Skolnik, who started a company called Kicked Down Prods. and will be exec producers. Hoch is co-directing with Mark Benjamin, who was the director of photography on "White Boys" and is also DPing "Jails." Once Hoch wraps his L.A. run, they'll shoot him performing in locations in New York and Cuba to eliminate the claustrophobic confines that usually hinder films based on one-man shows.
Garth Belcon produces and Hoch's agent Lindsay Porter and Scott Yoselow will work with Hoch's attorney John Sloss to set it up with a distributor. Hoch's also signed a soundtrack deal with the rap label Rawkus Records.
MAX MOVE EAST: Elizabeth Clark, who has run publicity for Castle Rock from Hollywood the past five years, is moving East to join Miramax Films. Clark, who in recent months has worked double duty for Castle Rock and as personal publicist for Jerry Seinfeld, will continue that arrangement with the former TV star, who moved back to Gotham after his show ended.
Clark, brought into the fold by Miramax exec veep Marcy Granata, is getting senior veep stripes, which put her on par with recently promoted senior veeps Erica Steinberg, Janet Hill, Gina Gardini and Teri Kane. Cynthia Swartz recently moved up to exec veep of special projects.
