Latest news out of the American Film Market, via Variety. Of all the real life stories to turn into a movie, the relationship between writer Thomas Wolfe and his editor Max Perkins was not in the top 100 that I want to see. Or even in the realm of “things that I knew were things.” I’m pretty sure only hardcore literary nerds were aware of the this relationship, or of Perkins’s existence in the first place (even though, in addition to Wolfe, he edited the work of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, among others of the Lost Generation). Which makes sense, since the nature of a book editor’s job is that they remain kind of anonymous, even though they’re instrumental in reigning in writers’ worst impulses. So hey, maybe a movie about the push-and-pull between author and editor could be interesting.
But what really interests me about Genius is the fact that Michael Fassbender and Colin Firth have been attached to it, playing Perkins and Wolfe, respectively (presumably). Sure, it irks my patriotism a bit that two Brits are playing titans of American literature, but years of British guys stealing superhero roles has mostly inured me to it. They’re both fantastic, and I look forward to watching them bounce off one another.
