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Casting Call: Pinocchio

The Fairy with the Turquoise Hair, also translated as The Blue Fairy, serves a very important purpose in Pinocchio; after Pinocchio tells the Fairy a falsehood, his nose grows longer, and it is up to the Fairy to explain the cause-effect relationship between the two. At one point, Pinocchio and the Fairy decide to be siblings, and it is the Fairy that enables Pinocchio's metamorphosis into a "real" boy.  According to director del Toro, "the Blue Fairy is really a dead girl's spirit." Yikes. 

Lily Allen
's father, actor Keith Allen, once played a fairy in a commercial for Listerine mouthwash. We feel there might be some resistance from the film's producers were we to try and cast Mr. Allen, so we are going to go with Lily instead.


Photo by Angelo Pennetta. Interview, January 2009.

 

Pinocchio actually kills The Talking Cricket in Carlo Collodi's book, and it is his spirit that comes back and advises Pinocchio. We'd like Daniel Radcliffe, an actor who has recently transitioned from boy to man, to mentor the puppet who wants to be a real boy. 

Actor, director, and president of RADA, Richard Attenborough is 88, so he might turn down this role, but we think he'd make an excellent Gepetto.

For the boy-puppet himself, we nominate newcomer Jared Gilman. Look how darling Gilman looks in this still from Moonrise Kingdom. Pinocchio makes some pretty terrible choices—he really needs to be played by someone who can make him a sympathetic character.

A rather dramatic moment occurs when Pinocchio wanders into a marionette theater and is nearly killed and used as firewood by the theatre owner, Mangiafuoco. Luckily, Pinocchio is spared and befriends three marionettes including Punch and Signora Rosaura, whom we are renaming Judy. We propose Frances McDormand as Judy...


Photo by Cliff Watts. Interview, October 2000.

...and Steve Buscemi as Punch.


Photo by Mario Sorrenti. Interview, October 1996.