Sandy McKean posted the following on our current Balanchine/Macaulay thread:



Sandy, you're really on to something! I'm already impatient to see this flm!

Does anyone have any ideas about:

-- casting? (Balanchine, his women, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Kirstein, Martins etc. etc.)
-- which ballets to feature? (and who should dance them)
-- key episodes from his life?
-- choreographic colleagues and/or rivals?
-- whether to include the elephants?
-- . . . . whatever strikes your fancy?

Definitely.............

The key would likely be who directed the movie. Nice change of pace for Martin Scorsese.

Gary Oldman might be a good Balanchine.

Kirsten: John Malkovitch or, if he can get serious enough, Jeff Goldblum (or Wilem Defoe? Jim Broadbent?)
Mr. B when young: Johnny Depp
Stravinsky: Kevin Spacey
Martins: Viggo Mortensen


The women (and some of the male dancers) are going to be hard to cast b/c of the bodies--Hilary Swank could be someone, if she stays in shape--but
of course Scarlett Johansson will play the young Una Kai!

All this said, I think I'd rather see a good film about the Ballets Russes, which would of course include B.

And I'd rather see PAUL MEJIA! (a new musical), which would of course include B. Like everything else, this would need Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role (and also as B...) and Penelope Cruz as Shari Mejia and Judi Dench as Romana Kryzanowska...Rona Barret as Arlene Croce, etc....PeeWee Herman as David Daniel..have I left out anybody?

Ray, there's always the biopic about Nijinsky to give us some ideas:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081235/.

it seems to me that Ross's film would serve as a model of what NOT to do when we make our film about Balanchine.

I lile Johnny Depp for the younger Balanchine. I'm looking at the book jacket of Richard Buckle's biography, and the young Balancine was very, very striking. I can see him attracting lots of women. How how about Ian McKellan for the older man? He is more of the cameleon than Malkovich. I'd go for a Continental European actor for Stravinsky, somebody who knows how to wear a suit and tie while changing a tire, not that Stravinsky ever changed any tires.

So, what about the women in his life?. Are all necessary? You could have them popping up from time to time as a kind of Greek chorus, I suppose. Or, Peter Martins could choreograph a dream sequence in which Depp and his dancer-double dances in turn with each of his wives and emerges emotionally devasted and much older. After this, he gathers up the pieces in order to create ... what?

It's a great job opportunity for dancers (or actresses who used to do ballet):
Danilova
Geva
Zorina
Tallchief
LeClerq
Farrell
Aroldingen

Any more? Was Mourka a female?

Too tough.

Maybe we count our blessings if we can cast just Farrell and perhaps one other as a true character. I envision alluding to the other loves, and then somehow injecting an old film sequence of that lover's dancing. Tallchief doing Firebird; the Zorina clip out of some Hollywood movie......you get the idea.

Maybe Sokurov ("Russian Arc") could do a small film about Balanchine with unknowns, unknown at least to Western audiences. A meditative film--not "Night & Day" or "Words & Music".

Or else a small incident--small incidents make good films--such as the summer before Balanchine and Danilova and their company left Soviet Russia after one of their colleagues was drowned in a boating accident on a lake. It was an accident most likely set up by a KGB agent. Black and white in gorgeous tones and in the style of early Bergman or the neorealist Fellini of "I Vitelloni." Or Antonioni of "Among Women Only."

"Accident on the lake" brings to mind Montgomery Clift who would make an interesting Balanchine. It might not have that much to do with his life but he was a wonderful screen presence--and he has something of Balanchine's facial structure. Clift would craft out an interesting character in a way Johnny Depp couldn't.

The Ivanova idea is a great one, Quiggin.

Montgomery Clift is an interesting idea, but he would be too handsome. Not that Balanchine was unattractive by any means, but he does seem to have had some insecurity about his looks. He can't be an obvious heartbreaker or someeone the girls would automatically swoon over.

Depending on how long of a movie we’re talking about, room should be found for Holly Howard, Josephine Baker, Marie-Jeanne, Allegra Kent, Diana Adams, and Lucia Davidova, not to mention a few acerbic asides from Melissa Hayden, who could be the Eve Arden figure.

Balanchine’s story would make a better miniseries, I think, or a theatrical film focused on a given period in his life. There’s only so much you can squeeze into a feature film, even if it ran to two and a half or three hours. If I had to choose, I might opt for his early life, including the Ballet Russes period (“Young Balanchine”), which would make a very interesting and colorful film, or his Vera Zorina period. The Farrell years present casting issues and I’m not sure how appealing a movie centered around a sexagenarian with erotic designs on a teenager would turn out to be.



Nope.



Good idea, although he’s a little long in the tooth to play the younger Balanchine.

Fun topic, bart.

You've hit on the solution.

I'm calling HBO in the morning!

Now that's an interesting observation, I wonder if it's widely held. I've always thought Balanchine was GORGEOUS, far more so than Montgomery Clift.

I'm with dirac on this one.

There is that photo of Mr B in his early twenties standing at the rail of a boat in Venice I believe. He looks "gorgeous" in that photo, but that's the only time I can think of that he looked more handsome than exotic.

I'll leave it for the woman on the board to say definitively, but it would seem to me that Balanchine should be cast with a more "intriguing" look than a "handsome" look.

Quiggin does have a good point about facial structure, though - cheekbones, profile are indeed somewhat similar. But I'd still say Clift is too conventionally attractive.

Yes, the meticulous setting of Apollo and the Prodigal Son would make the subject of a good film (director between Truffaut of Day for Night and Bresson of a Condemned Man Escaped).

Actually Diaghilev would not be that much of a presence--he was a little aloof during that period, maybe because of Igor Markevich ("half Igor"). Kochno was doing much of the work. The Apollo of the mid-twenties would be a shock to us, with the unaltered-for-Suzanne Farrell tempos and accents, the less than noble Lifar with his melty nose, the scene where the muses toss Apollo about on the tips of their feet.

Lord and Lady Keynes (Lydia Lopokova) would have to be characters of course. After dinner she and Balanchine once demonstrated to (the now fashionable again) Maynard Keynes how Firebird was danced. This was in 1947. Keynes noticed how shabby the sets for Ballet Imperial were and thought that if Balanchine's company toured in England, he could have the British stagehands remake them for much smaller sum of money. He was always the economist, according to his biographer, Skidelsky.

And the Zorina period would be a good focus. (She became Peter Lieberson the composer's mom.)

Yes any movie with an Eve Arden / Melissa Hayden character is a plus.

It's still open to anyone and to all ideas: art film or biopick; documentary or invention; ballet-centered or romance/sex-centered. Please join in.

Quiggan, your smaller art film is beautiful. Would it be possible to open it up a bit, perhaps moving back and forth between the young Balanchine starting his romantic and creative life and daring to flee from the Soviet Union and the older, established Balanchine, now established in New York City, during the days of his pain about Farrell? This would make the film longer but would have the virtue of letting us know something of what happened to the young man.

I would prefer an art film myself, but ... if we go with a miniseries ... should it be like The Six Wives of Henry VIII, with each episode involving a different wife (plus Farrell -- though apparently NOT Morkha )?

Would a 9 Muses theme work? Each woman would be placed in a particular setting important to B's biography. We could show him working with each on a ballet from that period. . I don't know enough about figures like Marie-Jeanne, Davidova, etc., to place them. Aroldingen was important to him, but that's not much of a story.

Dirac, I'd certainly add Hayden/Eve Arden figure starting with the LeClerq episode. Perhaps she and Danilova could observe and comment over a cup of coffee after class. They'd be skeptical and acerbic-- but deep down they really love the guy.

I can think of 7 women at least who tie to the important periods in GB's life and who can be attached -- accurately or not -- to an important ballet of the period.

Danilova (Russia) -- show them learning something familiar to the audience like -- something everyone knows is "old" and "formal" -- but experimenting with more modern work late at night in a garret somewhere in Petrograd.

Geva (Diaghilev Ballet -- Apollon Musagete, which introduces Stravinsky. You'd have to stretch the truth and pretend that Geva danced Terpsichore.),

Zorina (Hollywood and Broadway -- On Your Toes),

Tallchief (starting the New York City Ballet. Firebird),

LeClerq (tragedy and betrayal. La Valse)

Kent (Can we invent for her a central role in a "Return to Russia" episode? And have them do Seven Deadly Sins? I admit this is a stretch. For the purists, have them do Sonnambula.)

Farrell (l'affaire Farrell. Don Quixote. Followed, after her return from exile, by Diamonds.)

If we cast dancers, who, I wonder, would be best for each of the women?

Bart: The director then would have to be Max Ophuls (Letter from an Unknown Woman and La Ronde) to balance all the stories and keep the elusiveness-of-eros theme rolling along.

Or we could just telescope the time and make it into one uproarious bedroom farce. Have lots of doors in the set.

Hey I'm still stuck on MEJIA: THE MUSICAL! Don't forget Minnie Driver as Maria Teresia Mejia (nee Balough), PM's current wife whom he met while co-director of Tallchief's Chicago co. in the early eighties--and still married to Farrell. Other casting would include:

Tallchief--Faye Dunaway?
Farrrell
The young and swarthy Pascal Benichou, important for a memorable duet with PM where Benichou sings to PM, "You're not George Balanchine"-- in the vein of Robin Williams to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting: "It's not your fault."
Bejart
Some of the late sixties NYCB figures, like Vilella (as a mentor figure, of course) and John Clifford (who had to have been competing w/PM for choreographic attention, if I have my chronology right; or, if I don't, we'll just make it all up!).

How tall is Daniel Day-Lewis? Remember that Mejia is on the short side--George De La Pena could work for the current-day Mejia. Maybe "Freddie" from Six Feet Under as the younger PM?

OK...back to work!

There's a place on the screen for everything, I suppose. As our Balanchine is to Hamlet, this "Mejia" might be to ... what? ... Rosenkranz and Guildenstern are Dead?

I do think there'd be a real benefit to a serious film about Balanchine and his Work as well as his Women. I hear casual ballet attenders saying again and again, "I don't like Balanchine" even though they've seen very little of his work.

I personally love the tongue-in-cheek approach to this. Mel's suggestion of multiple stage doors in the style of the Marx Brothers or Noises Off! is brilliant. When your dealing with the average movie-goer, however, is it possible to communicate satire about people they don't know or don't care about? I'm not sure.

In the 30s and 40s Hollywood studios were constantly turning out films about famous creative geniuses: their suffering, their troubled love lives, AND their work (however simplified). To an extent, the Nijinsky and Tchaikovsky biopics of the 80s tried to do this as well. Is there an audience for such works -- whether about Balanchine or anyone else in classical arts -- in the current cultural marketplace?

THAT is hilarious...as is Faye Dunaway as Tallchief.

My take on Mel's would be more like a Marivaux play.

I don't think there's an actress in her teens, 20's, or 30's that could compete with the young Maria Tallchief's beauty (ETA), but Faye Dunaway is a stroke of genius.

My cast, ignoring that they'd never all be the right age (or alive) at the right time, and the accents would be all over the place:

Allegra Kent: Ludivine Sagnier, the young actress from "Swimming Pool"
Conrad Ludlow: Leslie Howard
Vera Zorina: Lena Olin
Suzanne Farrell: Juliette Binoche
Edward Villella: Al Pacino
Jacques d'Amboise: Bill Nye (The Science Guy)
Lincoln Kirstein: Orson Welles

For Balanchine, maybe Charlie Chaplin.

Inspired choices! I LOVED Swimming Pool, btw!

There is an actress out there now in film who looks like the young Tallcheif, btw--darned if I can remember her name.

Other Kirstein choices: Bill Irwin (he's tall--wait, maybe he could play d'Amboise) Harvey Fierstein (for the voice?!?)
Conrad Ludlow: Another Bill: Pullman

Better than a miniseries (because everything is going to fall short, no matter what) is an 80s-style nighttime soap called BALANCHINE ! after 'Dallas', 'Dynasty' and 'Falcon Crest'.

I can't wait for the opening credits which zoom in on the KOCH THEATRE, with rousing music by MIKE POST. I want the closing credits to be a MEDLEY OF FRANZ WAXMAN MOVIE MUSIC, including 'The Theme from Peyton Place'.

Lee Radziwill as Barbara Horgan...hasn't had a part since 'Laura'...Robin McNeil as Himself and Lesley Stahl as Herself...Rin Tin Tin and/or Lassie as one of the Famous Dogs of Ballerinas...

I thought of Truffaut too, Quiggin. Bresson wouldn't have occurred to me but I think you're on to something. (On the other hand he might cast Léaud as Balanchine.)

Alan Rudolph isn’t a director on that level but he’s taken an interest in the period and he can handle a crowded canvas.

Welles would create his own solipsistic world for Kirstein, and Chaplin would be nicely enigmatic for Balanchine. The place to use Johnny Depp might be for Conrad Ludlow--or even for Leslie Howard.

I just realized my post reads as if I'm suggesting Bresson would cast Leaud. Didn't mean that, obviously.

Welles is a great idea for Kirstein.

I've been trying to imagine Welles (even if he were alive) as Lincoln Kirstein. I saw, as a number of us on Ballet Talk saw, Kirstein occasionally and know what he sounded like and how he moved. I've also seen most of Welles's movies, including all the biggies. Somehow, I'm not making the connection.

I don't know many of the actors who've been named, but I have seen a bit of Juliette Binoche's film work. I'm having trouble imagining her as Suzanne Farrell. Not that she couldn't act the part, but in the areas of appearance, quality of movement, and that strange, serene blankness that could take over Farrell's face while performing. I'd think that an American actress would be required to portray the very young Farrell's appearance of midwestern normality in daily life. Was Binoche ever so innocent and unformed?

A question: assuming she's included in the film, is there any contemporary actress who could do the Melissa Hayden-as-acerbic commentator role suggested by dirac? I think we need grittier than Eve Arden. Who'se available today who could portray Hayden in her dancing years and, if required by the screenplay, as in retirement, looking back.

Young Pacino as young Villella is great. They not only are similar physical types, they're both capable of playing very smart characters.

Not a contemporary actress, but maybe Agnes Moorehead in her Bewitched days. Meryl Streep can be ascerbic enough, but she doesn't look tough in the same way.

Maybe Juliet Stephenson could play Karin von Aroldingen, who, at least when interviewed on film, has a combination of warmth and wryness. A young Helen Mirren could have played Tanaquil Leclerq, at least the sensual Leclerq from the "Afternoon of a Faun" film with d'Amboise.

Inspiration: Martha Plimpton as Heather Watts!
And maybe Judy Davis as Melissa H?
Joachim Phoenix as Jock Soto

Yes!!!! Perfect for Mortensen as Martins.

I can't either, even with the slimmer Welles of the 30s. He might have made a sort of saturnine presence, which Kirstein was certainly capable of projecting from time to time, but I doubt that Welles would make much of Kirstein's quiet ebullience, of which he was equally capable. The liveliest I ever saw Kirstein was at a military history conference, where he lectured on the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments in the American Civil War.

with all due respect the first person that comes to mind as lincoln kirstein (again laying aside the question of whether the actor is even with us) is ted cassidy, who played lurch on the addams family.

John Lithgow has some of the physical attributes of Kirstein. And he can do intensity, intelligence and oddness, all quitessential Kirstein qualities.

Helene, I tend to think of Moorehead as having ominous undertones (Citizen Kane's mother, etc.) Judy Davis, on the other hand, suggested by Ray, might really be able to get her teeeth into the grittiness and combativeness that Hayden's story suggests. Somehow I think that Hayden was basically good humored, underneath it all. Moorehead, even in comedy, suggests deep (however subtle) layers of malice and unforgivingness. To me at least.

RE: Farrell. Do you really need an actress? There's so much passivity in her relationship to Balanchine. Even when she rebelled (by marrying and then by embracing an entirely different kind of rep with Bejart, the anti-Balanchine) I don't see her as looking or acting particularly rebellious. Of all the Balanchine women, Farrell is to me the least interesting as a woman and the most interesting as a dancer. (I admit that her career after retirement has shown strength, imagination and gumption.)

Who could DANCE Farrell plausibly? The person chosen can always get an acting coach to help her with the lines.

Farrell Fan, where are you? We need your imput on this.

Yes!

Wow, a veritable Sid and Nancy of high modernist ballet!

Binoche is too short for Farrell.

Pacino is right for Villella in many ways, but he could never play a dancer - his torso is disproportionately long and he's really quite short in the leg. Not that noticeable if he's photographed carefully, but there's no hiding in tights.

(If there ever was a movie, it would be best to go with real dancers and not actors, in any case, IMO. But we're just having fun here.)

Welles didn't resemble Kirstein, but he had the physical and vocal presence to convey a theatrical sense of Kirstein, if you will. Lithgow's too mild.

I'm not sure anyone currently performing could dance the way Farrell did, but if one had to choose, it would have to be someone trained at SAB. There's just no other school that could get the style right.

The interesting thing about most of the comments is that they seem to indicate that no movie could now be made, since dead or way-too-old actors and directors are being cast more often than living. The directors who could do different kinds of films about NYCB and Balanchine are Altman and Welles ( Welles as director IMO, although he's one of my favourite actors). That French director, Leos Carax, who did Pola X might know how to do it, or Techine might be able to do an intimate story about a couple of the characters only, but I don't know. I also like the idea of Ken Russell doing something with it--it needs to be a movie if it were really done, not just another docufiction--and Russell's irreverence might be just right.

Use old footage of the actual old dancers dancing, let actors do the rest of the characters--the magic would be lost if even fine new dancers danced the old roles. Altman could have done one of his big, sprawling things and included Gelsey's episode in it with Peter Martins and Baryshnikov too, but Welles would have figured out something nobody else could have if he'd thought it interesting as cinema, because he had such a huge talent--he even makes Loretta Young effective in 'The Stranger' just because of his magnetic and powerful force.

I can see that a real movie could be made, though. It will probably be by a director who loves the ballets and decides to do something. Probably only real story in it would based on the Farrell affair, so the late 60s, early 70s with all those dancers in clips of their own dancing, even if it needs to be blurred or filtered or something, but good casting for the acting with young actors. Possibly the gorgeous statuesque Carole Bouquet as an older Farrell, doing the requisite reminiscing scenes tinged with melancholy. But Michelle Pfeiffer might be exactly right for that too, being all-American in that special glamorous way. Nicole Kidman as Farrell--NOT! I like Pacino for Balanchine more than Villella.

Julia Roberts? She looks not at all like Hayden (or anyone else), but she showed a tough, wisecracking, earthy bundle of determination as Erin Brockovitch.

I agree. Welles could embody Kirstein's air of brooding detachment. Not only is Lithgow to "light," I simply find him very annoying.

Catherine Deneuve exactly as she is now for Mrs. Ficker (unless she changed her name to Farrell). She's proved she can do this kind of thing in 'Dancer in the Dark'. Good scenes with her and Judi Dench as Romana Kryzanowska-Mejia as they struggle toward their own respective goals for Miss Farrell.

Getting really back on topic, I think given how amazingly complex the life of Balanchine was, his story has to be done as an HBO miniseries.

We'll definitely need to film the miniseries extensively in Saint Petersburg, Paris, and New York City, with a lot of additional soundstage and digital post production work (we are very fortunate that most of buildings around the Mariinsky Theatre have survived or rebuilt to original specs, so that lends much authenticity to Balanchine's days at the Imperial Ballet Academy).

Casting, however, will be a big problem. Just the role of Balanchine himself will require an actor with good dancing skills and good acting skills, since he was well-known as a good dancer besides being a great choreographer. Just all the roles of the various people in this project would require one of the most extensive casting calls around. Also, remember the project will likely require the approval and assistance of the George Balanchine Foundation, too.

Be ready to spend as much money as spent on Band of Brothers or From the Earth to the Moon--not an easy sell in today's economy.

Veering back to the Ficker conundrum...

Sorry, but I think Deneuve is just too glamorous for Mrs. Ficker. More accurate would be Estelle Harris, the actresses who played George's mother in Seinfeld ,or Doris Roberts, the mother in Everybody Loves Raymond. OR a more high-powered possibility is Brenda Blethyn.

Or another Estelle -- Parsons.

I'm with Sacto1654.

I can't think of a reason to reduce Balanchine to the Farrell plotline. Wouldn't that become, in essence, a Farrell biopic? Or, worse, a reworking of the story of Svengali and Trilby? Better not to do it at all.

Good point. Best to cover many earlier periods in Balanchine's life too. For another very "romantic" chapter, how about his pursuit of Vera Zorina? I remember
reading stories, perhaps not truly factual, of Balanchine out in the rain outside Zorina's NYC apartment. What actresses could play the very glamorous trio
of Geva, Danilova, and Zorina?

Also his departure from Russia is also another very complex story with one of the troup coming to a bad end.

Among the sources for the script should be "Choura" and "I remember Balanchine"

Let's not overlook richard53dog's great casting question:

Helene has ventured Lena Olin for Zorina, but Sandy thinks that trying to cast all the Balanchine women would be "too touch." I join Richard in not being willing to give up on casting this threesome yet.

Hollywood ideas of glamour and sexiness have changed so much in recent decades. Does anyone have that between-the-World-Wars kind of glamour that these 3 ballerinas had? Judging from the still photos, all three seemed to project sexual allure, intelligence, independence, and class, indifferent proportions for each. (Photos of Danilova and her l-o-n-g legs played a small but crucial part in getting me interested in ballet when I was a kid.)

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm803772672/nm0000962

So drop-dead gorgeous she was in the 80s film 'Trop Belle Pour Toi' with Gerard Depardieu, not to mention 'For Your Eyes Only' and 'That Obscure Object of Desire'. Also wonderful in 'Lucie Aubrac.' But be careful--she's possibly a little more glamour than you even bargained for...

Wow! I see she did a 'Berenice' (Racine) in 2000 w/Depardieu too for French TV. I bet it was sensational.

Irma Nioradze might do well as Zorina. Katina Paxinou as the later Danilova and Akim Tamarif as an older version of Lifar or Massine, if Welles is still directing. Maybe Patrick has a Fritz Lang cast.

Zorina married Goddard Lieberson and was Peter Lieberson's, the composer, mom. She had another son, a friend of which I met on a train to Oregon a few years ago in a dimly lit, old Santa Fe club car that Amtrak still used (you had to step up a bit to enter it). The friend was an insomniac and took long train trips when he couldn't sleep. He said that in the old days Zorina used to drive him and Peter Lieberson's brother to school and was so expressive that he was afraid they might drive off the road as she spoke and smoked and drove on.

I just saw "Tell No One", and there are two actresses who should be in the movie:

Kristin Scott Thomas -- another option for LeClerq
Nathalie Baye -- maybe Tallchief? She certainly can play gutsy. I don't have a sense of Geva to know if she'd be right for it.

Christine Ricci is an alternative for Allegra Kent.

I figured Baye was maybe mid-40's tops in the movie, but according to her bio, she was 58 when it was released. Unbelievable.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000882/

We need actresses with charm for Danilova and Verdy, and my mind is drawing blanks.