Casting Call: A Moveable Feast
In which we suggest who would star in the next big adaptation, remake, or historical film.
Ernest Hemingway’s haunting memoir A Moveable Feast is one step closer to the silver screen. Hemingway’s granddaughter, Oscar-nominated actress Mariel Hemingway (whom we interviewed for our July 2013 issue), has owned the film rights since 2009, but development finally seems to be underway with the news that Michael Hirst is adapting the screenplay. Hirst, an award-winning British writer, is best known as the creator of the historical drama series Vikings and the screenwriter of Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. “It is just the greatest love story ever written,” Hirst said of Hemingway’s book at a recent London event for the second season of Vikings. “The most painful love story and the most honest.”
A Moveable Feast is everything you’d hope for in a memoir about such an iconic age. Reflective, elegiac, and bitingly honest, the book is made up of Hemingway’s personal stories, observations, and accounts of his experiences in Paris. Acclaimed expatriate writers from the Lost Generation—ranging from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Gertrude Stein—are featured against the backdrop of Paris’ unparalleled cityscape. Many specific bars, cafes and hotels that Hemingway frequented can still be found in modern-day Paris, and filming at these locations could add even more poignancy to this long-awaited adaptation. The book was also a source of inspiration for Woody Allen’s 2011 film, Midnight in Paris, in which Owen Wilson’s character similarly encounters many famous artists (including Hemingway himself) in 1920s Paris.
Between the glitz and glam of the Roaring Twenties and the Paris’ place as a capital of the arts in post-World War I Europe, the possibilities for lavish costumes, sets, and stunning exterior shots abound. Of course, just the right actors are a must for portraying the twentieth century literary elite. In the interest of making Mariel Hemingway’s producing job a bit easier, we’ve come up with a cast that would no doubt do justice to these legendary figures.
Casting Call runs every Friday. For more, click here.
