Saturday 27 October 2007

Heading on down to the "Love Ranch"

Hollywood marriages never seem to last. I actually have milk with a longer expiration date than most marriages that Hollywood, in fact the world, spews out.
It's always nice to see a showbiz marriage not my the time said milk sours. And what is nicer is when the couple seem to really be in love and choose to work together. And no I am not talking about Sarah Michelle Geller and Freddy Prinze Jr.. I am talking about Helen Mirren and her director hubby Taylor Hackford, who have been married for ten years this December
So far they have yet to work together, but have recently decided to on the movie “Love Ranch”. Taylor will direct his wife opposite Joe Pesci.
The story is a drama inspired by the real lives of Sally and Joe Conforte, who opened the first legalised brothel in Nevada, called The Mustang Ranch, only to find scandal when boxer Oscar Bonavena was shot at the ranch in 1976, apparently because he was having an affair with Sally.
Mirren would, of course, play Sally, with Pesci as Joe in his first major role since 1998's Lethal Weapon 4 (The Good Shepherd earlier this year was just a glorified cameo).

The film does sound like something that could be extremely exciting to watch. Helen Mirren can really do not wrong right now, even when she does wrong (ahem..”National Treasure 2” but then again mama needs a pay check).
She seems like the type of woman who would only work with her husband on a film if the script/story was fantastic. The New York magazine writer who first penned the story that became “American Gangster”, a man by the name of Mark Jacobson, wrote the “Love Ranch” screenplay. We will have to wait and see how good he is at screenplay writing, but would Helen stir us in the wrong direction? I do not think so.
Hackford told Variety. "I had to beg; she's a very busy girl. She wouldn't agree unless it was a great role, and this is a great role."
As for Pesci, he said, ""Joe didn't have any desire to work, but he was the first person I had in mind to play the husband, this former cab driver who dreamed of making prostitution legal and carved out a tiny county and convinced the local politicians. He's playing the godfather of legalized prostitution, and it convinced Joe to jump back into the fire."

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