If it’s written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, get Keira Knightley to play the Daisy Buchanan part. Whether it actually be playing Daisy Buchanan in Baz Lurhmann’s potential Great Gatsby project or the real-life (and Daisy inspiration) Zelda Fitzgerald in John Curran’s upcoming The Beautiful and the Damned, everyone is trying to get the young actress to play the complicated, torturous shrew who both destroyed and defined Scott Fitzgerald’s short life.
One more time then: Pajiba is reporting that Matt Damon and Knightley have been offered the two romantic leads in an adaptation of Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, the writer’s fourth and last completed novel. His fifth book, The Love of The Last Tycoon, was published posthumously and unfinished, even made into an uneven Elia Kazan film starring Robert De Niro.
Here’s a brief synopsis of Night:
“…about the psychological disintegration of a young married American couple on the French Riviera in the 1920s. Damon would play Dick, a promising young doctor and a husband to Nicole (Knightley), whose wealth puts him in a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlight’s Dick’s traumatic demise.” [Pajiba]
Knightley (not suprisingly) would be perfect for Nicole, but Damon isn’t such a sure pick. Lest us not forget those early years when the man tried his hand at romance and wound up with All The Pretty Horses and The Legend of Bagger Vance, two films that would’ve had a better chance at critical survival had Damon’s part been played by someone sexier (like Brad Pitt or Leo DiCaprio, say).
Damon’s admitted as much in interviews about being unequipped to deliver syrupy lines the way a Redford can.
Not that we wouldn’t want him to try again. We’ll see what he has to offer in George Nolfi’s upcoming romance sci-fi film The Adjustment Bureau, starring alongside Emily Blunt.
Would you like to see Matt Damon as the romantic lead? In a Revolutionary Road-esque anti-romance?