How to Cast: Brad Pitt

Pitt might take on Steve McQueen in a biopic. Hmmm. Cinematical reports the former Benjamin Button is in negotiations to play the rugged, charismatic action star but questions whether it would work since Pitt is almost too pretty and maybe not as macho and coolly detached as McQueen was. I think Pitt could do it, but my question is why would he want to? The guy is already so well established on his own that playing someone as iconic as McQueen isn’t really the best move. You’d almost want to go with someone relatively new – like Chris Pine or something. When James Franco played James Dean in that TV movie, it worked because no one really knew Franco at the time (and he looked eerily like Dean). Apparently, McQueen’s widow wants Daniel Craig to play her late husband. I could understand that, but he’s already James Bond to me.

In other casting news: Will Smith might use his effusive personality to play a real-life hero in a movie about Hurricane Katrina. Once again Cinematical reports, Smith’s production company bought the rights to the story of John “The Can Man” Keller, an ex-Marine who kept a couple hundred people in his building – many elderly and/or handicapped – safe after the storm hit New Orleans, documenting it with video and photos. Sure, there were a few heroes during that awful time, but as Keller told the Times-Picayune in 2007, “There were other people rescuing people. But they didn’t hot-wire boats, hot-wire cars, swim to the grocery store, come back with food, cook for all those people, organize them, get the thugs off them.” At this point, Smith’s only involvement in the film, titled The American Can, is as an executive producer, but you got to figure he’ll play Keller. Sounds like his kind of role.

Now that Guy Ritchie has divorced Madonna, who I thought was stifling him creatively, the British director is on a role. Last year’s RocknRolla was a return to his fast-paced gangster style, a real hoot, and he has got his vision of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr., coming up in December. According to UK paper The Sun, Ritchie is also reportedly eyeing a remake of Guys and Dolls. It’s all talk now, but oh boy, how would THAT work through Ritchie’s skewed Cockney brain? Wait, maybe Brad Pitt should petition for this film instead, to play Nathan Detroit in the same vein as he played Mickey O’Neil in Snatch. Imagine the possibilities.