In case you missed it, the Sunday Times had a big Arts & Leisure feature on projects competing to tell the story of
’70s porn idol Linda Lovelace. It was the one that didn't get any notice until the second page that had us most curious — the one titled
Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story.
According to the article, it's scheduled to shoot in March with Watchmen's Malin Akerman as Lovelace and Matt Dillon as her first husband and handler Chuck Traynor. It's already gone through many exasperating setbacks — the most public of which involved the early casting of Lindsay Lohan in the lead, in what should have been her comeback role. (I'll spare you months of tabloid headlines by saying that didn't happen.)
But the main reason we're interested is that the writer and director is Matthew Wilder, who's written film reviews on occasion for the Scene. (His go-to-the-mat rave for the late Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon was a highlight of last year.) Back in 2008, his script for Inferno landed in the Top 10 on the ballyhooed Black List polling Hollywood executives about their favorite unproduced scripts. (For comparison's sake that year, Inglourious Basterds came in at No. 21, while current Best Picture nominee The Descendants was at No. 14.)
Read the Times piece, and you'll probably come away thinking both movies sound really interesting — though if I had to choose at the moment, I don't know that I'd go for the one whose producer says the grim Lovelace story needs "levity."
