Claire Danes in "Me and Orson Welles"

[Natasha (candygirl)]

New recruits sign on for 'Orson Welles'
By Stuart Kemp

Feb 1, 2008

LONDON -- Claire Danes, Eddie Marsan, Leo Bill and Imogen Poots have joined the cast of RIchard Linklater's "Me and Orson Welles," an adaptation of the period coming-of-age novel by Robert Kaplow.

They join Zac Efron and Ben Chaplin in the cast for the 1937-set movie, which centers on a high school student (Efron) who, while strolling the streets of New York, happens upon the yet-to-open Mercury Theatre and is noticed by its mercurial founder, Orson Welles.

He lands a bit part in "Julius Caesar," the production that catapulted Welles to the top, and spends the next week learning about life and love.

Newcomer Christian McKay plays Welles, and Chaplin ("Water Horse: The Legend of the Deep") has been cast as English film and stage actor George Coulouris.

The script was penned by Holly Gent Palmo, who worked on Linklater's "Dazed and Confused," and Vince Palmo, who is a long time collaborator with the director.

Ann Carli is producing the film, which is scheduled to shoot on the Isle of Man, London and New York beginning in February.

With backing from the Isle of Man Film Commission and Framestore Feature, the title is produced by Marc Samuelson ("Stormbreaker," "Wilde"), Carli and Linklater with Steve Christian, John Sloss and Steve Norris taking executive producer roles.

Cinetic Media will handle domestic sales, and Cinetic Media and Odyssey Entertainment are jointly appointed to rep foreign sales on the project.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con ... 6ffa3b5866

[Jody Barsch*]

Richard Linklater and Orson Welles -- two of my favorites! (I'm still waiting for the movie that will make me actually like Claire Danes again.) This sounds promising. Although I doubt anyone can do as good of an Orson Welles as Angus Macfadyen did in The Cradle Will Rock. (I'm interested to see what Zac Efron's acting looks like without that shagged hair -- is that mean?)

[Sascha]

EW has a picture of Claire Danes and Zac Efron from "Me and Orson Welles":

[Swagger91]

Did anyone else see this film? I got the DVD at the start of the summer and it's what ultimately lead me to MSCL. Romeo + Juliet came out when I was about five and Claire is like the first girl I thought was really pretty (my older sister was a Leo fanatic so it was on the VCR allllllll the damn time!), anyway I kinda forgot about her over the years until I purchased Me & Orson Welles and not only was it a really awesome film but it reminded me of how beautiful Claire actually is. After a bit of googling I read stuff about MSCL and, being a 30 Seconds To Mars fan as well, I thought I'd youtube the show and of course the rest is now history.....

I kind of went a bit off topic there but I really enjoyed Me & Orson Welles and I'd recommend giving it a try if you ever come across it. It can be pretty difficult to get a hold of though as they couldn't get a proper distribution deal or something, resulting in it getting a really limited DVD release in the States and it only being available from Tesco stores in the UK.