To Jolie, Or Not To Jolie:
The perils of bringing Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta to the screen
posted 8-12-2010 - 12:50 am

 
I love a good mystery. Always have. My affair with Agatha Christie novels began in sixth grade, right around the same time that I discovered Stan Getz records and James Bond films. Christie made Earle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason look simple and Mickey Spillane look rude and dumb. I favored Hercule Poirot over Miss Marple, but not by much.

It wasn’t long before I discovered Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and British mysteries on public television. It was all downhill from there; I became a mystery reader for life. In time, I ran across crime novelist Patricia Cornwell’s work and became an avid reader of that, too. And a fan of her character Kay Scarpetta, the fictional chief medical examiner of Virginia. It wasn’t hard to identify with her: when I began in journalism, I, too, was the rare woman in a man’s profession and just about as welcome (meaning: not very).

So when it was announced last February that Scarpetta might finally be brought to life on the big screen, naturally, I was interested. Until I learned that Angelina Jolie would probably get the role.

I thought about that again just recently when Jolie’s latest film, Salt, came out to great acclaim (even Roger Ebert likes it, and he’s even pickier than I am). Salt is the pinnacle of Jolie’s action-film career – and a prime example of why she shouldn’t be cast as Kay Scarpetta. Not that Hollywood pays attention to trifling little details like that. Then again, Tinsel Town is rife with stories of film projects that never made it or took years to be realized; Cornwell’s painfully long efforts to bring Scarpetta to film (two decades, in this case) are a common enough tale of frustration.

The word that Angelina Jolie and her agent had signed on to bring Cornwell’s famous character to life – Jolie as the lead, the agent as one of the producers – sat uncomfortably with me when the news broke six months ago. The first day, it wasn’t a big deal to anyone not in the film business, except, possibly, Ms. Cornwell; so the world kept turning with little notice. Until the pissed-off fan reaction began coming in. Turns out the fans sided with me.

My first reaction was: WOW, is this a bad idea. It just struck me as a mistake on so many levels. It was all I could do to hope that this effort, too, would fail. My sympathy was with the frustrated Cornwell, but better yet another delay than to botch the film with the wrong lead. Then I went back to following actual, worthwhile news and forgot about Cornwell and Jolie. Everyone outside of Hollywood seemingly forgot about it, too, and nobody associated with the project brought it back into the limelight. Good strategy, at that point; a low profile made sense, given the sour reaction from Cornwell fans.

Still, the idea just stuck in my craw. I kept noodling over it in the back of my mind, off and on, seeing as I do love good films and am usually contemptuous of star power in Hollywood. I could see why Cornwell would agree to it, after waiting so long: Jolie might actually have the money and clout to pull this off, and in the short-term mentality of Hollywood, that frequently counts more than whether or not the right people might be working on a project. It wouldn’t be the first or last time a studio tried to shoehorn an actor into an ill-fitting role just because the actor was the darling of the moment and could swing some muscle.

There is ample reason for concern, however. One big flop here could be the kiss of death for ever making another Scarpetta film again, thus dooming an entire potential franchise. You’d think that would duly concern Ms. Cornwell, not to mention the studio in question. But no: that seems to be too rational a reaction for Hollywood.

Case in point: nobody’s ever been able to do another V.I. Warshawski film after Kathleen Turner’s 1991 box office disaster. While Sara Paretsky’s novels have continued to sell very well indeed, Turner’s career has never been quite the same after that abysmal adaptation, even though her performance was the only good thing about the film. The dud also seriously hampered the careers of two of the three screenwriters involved as well as director Jeff Kanew, but as he was a big part of the problem (as was the unforgivably tedious script), that was fair: it spared film audiences more of his awful efforts.

Another example: James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels and the flat, cardboard film embarrassment that was Heaven’s Prisoners (1996). Alec Baldwin recovered eventually, having gone on to reinvent himself a time or two in the process (he also did Ghosts of Mississippi that same year, which helped to bail out his reputation). So did the horribly miscast Teri Hatcher, she of the outrageously mangled Southern accent (luckily for her, she was still doing the very popular Lois & Clark series). Scriptwriter Harley Peyton and director Phil Joanou deservedly bombed after that, too (a small courtesy for which I am very grateful, having endured the laughingstock they made out of a book I enjoyed).

Understandably, there wasn't another Robicheaux film until 2009 because nobody wanted to take the risk; and even that one, In The Electric Mist, was underwhelming despite Tommy Lee Jones in the lead role and a handful of equally impressive stars (then again, Bertrand Tavernier was the director; perhaps distinguished French directors really shouldn't tackle mystery novels set in the American south, particularly when using fledgling Polish screenwriters. Ouch). Yet Burke’s novels continue to be best sellers, and Burke himself was made a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America in 2009.

Besides all that, the folks on the Scarpetta film project seem to have forgotten a salient point: the potential audience for a Scarpetta film will come to see it because of the main character and the books, not so much the star – much the same as with the Harry Potter films and the Twilight films, for which the roles made the stars and not vice-versa. A good choice of a lead actress won’t interfere with the film’s natural audience and can expand that interest to a much wider audience; but a bad choice will ruin the film plus disappoint both the novels’ fans and the potentially larger audience, killing off any box office potential.

Already, this Scarpetta project smells like three-day-old fish during a power outage. Jolie’s physical presence is way off for this role. And I say this as someone who has really liked Jolie in several other roles: casting her as Kay Scarpetta is like casting a 17-year-old anorexic as Mae West. Or Mae West as a 17-year-old anorexic. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and no amount of money, publicity, spin, makeup, or special effects will make it right.

The Scarpetta books are intricate hybrids of mysteries and crime stories – not action films – in which the forensics and the main characters’ relationships are key to the plots. This isn’t big-lipped Lara Croft in a lab coat, and to treat the first Scarpetta film and, potentially, the future franchise as such by casting Ms. Jolie insults the audiences. That’s a fatal mistake with a book series that is so widely read and best selling internationally.

Kay Scarpetta isn’t a larger than life character, a figure of legend, a suffering widow/mother/misunderstood teen drug addict, or an action star – which are the only kinds of roles Jolie has taken on in films, to date – and to rewrite the role to suit Jolie would pervert the character and alienate most of the book series’ existing fans. Is there no casting director with courage enough to say this?

Which brings us to the obvious next question: Who should play forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta? There are a few possibilities.

The name mentioned most often as an alternative to Jolie is Diane Lane. Yes, I can see that. I'm remembering how much I liked Lane’s work in Secretariat, Unfaithful, The Perfect Storm, and Untraceable (the comedies and romances she’s been in, such as Must Love Dogs, Under The Tuscan Sun, and Nights In Rodanthe, are irrelevant here).

Bluntly, the role of Kay Scarpetta, if it is to be portrayed effectively on screen, is not a big-star vehicle. No, this is, paradoxically, a smaller, more tightly focused role that also just happens to be the lead character in 17 hugely popular mystery/crime novels. And that makes the underrated but very talented Diane Lane a go-to candidate.

The reasons for casting Lane rather than Jolie are several:

1) Lane is far more believable as the serious, low-key, honey-blonde Kay Scarpetta, and she has the right physical presence, whereas there is never anything low key about Jolie on screen; moreover, there is nothing that can be done to alter Jolie’s looks to make her suitable for Scarpetta. Jolie is as exotic and out of place as a bird of paradise among pansies. Lane is more like a Peace rose: more refined and elegant than a pansy, but not startlingly out of place in the same garden and not loudly fighting for attention, either.

2) Lane has more ability to project that particular combination of reserve, vulnerability, high intelligence, hard-pressed fire, control, meticulousness, and persistence that are the primary characteristics of Scarpetta, a personality that is absolutely indelible yet does not 'shout' in any way. Jolie just doesn’t have that in her portfolio.

3) This is about drama, not melodrama: Scarpetta is a role of quiet intensity and tension – it's the difference between playing a pirate queen versus doing Kabuki, where there is great intensity but also great restraint. More Alfred Hitchcock or Ingmar Bergman than Joel Silver or Christopher Nolan. Jolie just hasn't demonstrated that kind of restrained intensity in any of her roles over the last 15 years; Lane's acting chops on that score are much better.

4) LANE IS THE RIGHT AGE. I cannot overstate this, because it means that no idiotic rewriting or reimagining to make Scarpetta younger would be necessary: Lane could play Scarpetta as she was written by Cornwall. Which is only right and proper.

A very close second choice would be Saffron Burrows, who at this writing is Jeff Goldblum’s partner on the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Burrows projects the right kind of cool, professional dead-seriousness and effectiveness needed to portray the bottled-up but thorough, detached Scarpetta that isn’t of the in-your-face, over-the-top-earnest variety (and here, I’m thinking of Jolie’s role in Changeling, the frantic mother who had to do more pleading and screaming than thinking). Kay Scarpetta is a thinking heroine who does hard, thankless detail work to find killers, not an action figure. Burrows can do that.

In fact, I can’t think of one Jolie role to date that shows even a hint of what would be needed here. That might make Kay Scarpetta a welcome challenge for Jolie, but that doesn’t necessarily serve the film well, let alone the character or the audience.

The more I think about it, the more I like the overlooked Burrows as Scarpetta. It could be a real breakout film role for her and still work well for the script and any subsequent franchise.

Third choice? Kyra Sedgwick. She can hold her own in a serious feature film and has repeatedly shown great versatility in the film roles she’s played. In fact, until her starring role on TNT’s The Closer, Sedgwick was considered primarily a film actress, and in indie films at that.

What works against her as Scarpetta is how successful she’s been at inhabiting the character of Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson. The industry may have already unfairly typecast her as a particular kind of character in a crime series, even though I have absolute faith in her ability to bring to life Scarpetta, whose character is markedly different from that of Chief Johnson. But we’re dealing with stupid, superficial Hollywood perceptions here – and no matter how many times those perceptions are proven wrong and the guilty parties end up on their asses, Hollywood never seems to learn from such mistakes. Thus, the bitter irony that Sedgwick’s success with The Closer might doom her for Scarpetta. That’s a real shame.

As for suggestions that Elizabeth Mitchell or Kathryn Morris might do ... well, maybe as ninth or tenth choices if this were going to be a TV mini-series for Lifetime – but not for any serious film franchise. Sorry, but neither of those women has the acting chops to pull off the lead in a huge theatrical film release, let alone star in the premiere film of what could be a big new movie franchise. I mention Lifetime as an example of the disaster this film project could become, for a reason: Lifetime has already botched its own made-for-TV versions of Cornwell’s two Win Garano novels by rendering them as silly melodrama that is overwrought even for that genre and that network. Admittedly, the novels in question, At Risk and The Front, are probably Cornwell’s weakest works to date; but the screenwriters did them much worse anyway.

Even more problematic is the choice of a screenwriter with virtually no history of accomplishment in that field. Kerry Williamson?? Who??? Sure, she might be a diamond in the rough, but wouldn’t someone have discovered that by now? One or two low-key screenplays do not usually a successful career make, unless you’re dealing with highly original scripts rather than adaptation from very well known material. A look at her IMDB page, however – which shows minimal experience – makes you wonder: who the hell is Kerry Williamson, and whom did she bribe/flatter/cozy up to in order to get this break? Or, more likely, did the studio decide it could program this relative novice like a Stepford hack to butcher the book plots in whatever way it chooses, in order to shovel Jolie into the role no matter what?

It remains to be seen whether the director who ends up with this project (if it flies) is smart enough to insist on someone far more appropriate for the role, versus just signing a Big Name with the thought that that would guarantee box office (always a stupid assumption). Then again, Fox has been blithely stupid before, and the Hollywood PR machine says the studio has already locked on Jolie (what else can one expect when Jolie’s manager is one of the people at the reins of this project?). Let the audience beware.

Not that I will lose any sleep over this, no matter how much I love the Scarpetta novels or cinema, but ... I keep thinking of Bonfire Of The Vanities, where the miscast star power overshadowed the story, the script was so much weaker than the remarkable novel, and all the various missteps resulted in box office poison. Worse, it came across as more of a black comedy than a dark, wry cautionary tale about Wall Street. I was disappointed, all the more so because I found Tom Wolfe’s scathing novel all too eerily accurate; it was also far more hauntingly dark than darkly comic, and the scriptwriters never got that.

So: I really hope Patricia Cornwell is paid dearly for the rights to her novel(s) and is laughing all the way to the bank – because I don’t think she’ll like the result with Jolie in it, no matter how much she may like the actress personally. I know I won’t bother with it if Jolie stays. And I’ll bet I’m not alone on that.