D.J. Caruso says Shia LaBeouf is 'perfect' for a 'Y: The Last Man' film trilogy
Director D.J. Caruso now says he hopes to make a film trilogy based on the "Y: The Last Man" comic books that will star Shia LaBeouf and also tweak a basic element of the plot -- even though he knows any departure from the original risks the wrath of fanboy purists.
"It is tricky to suggest changing things. I'm sure the fanboys will stone me and my kids for daring to change a thing. But Brian K. Vaughan [the writer of the comics] loves the ideas we've come up with. He even said said, 'You have to think outside the box because the reason this story hasn't been made into a movie so far is that we haven't thought outside the box.'"
I sat down with Caruso the other day at one of his favorite spots in Los Angeles, the grand and venerable Union Station, a site used by Ridley Scott in his brilliant "Blade Runner," a film dearly loved by Caruso. "When I found that out, I started coming here and I just got taken by the place." We got together to talk about the tech-thriller "Eagle Eye," which stars LaBeouf and opens this Friday (that Calendar cover story ran Sunday in the Los Angeles Times) but eventually the conversation turned to Caruso's next project. There's been chatter for months about Caruso making a "Y" movie, and while he was careful to say it's not a done deal, he seemed very optimistic that "Y: The Last Man" would be at theaters in 2010.
"It's at New Line and New Line is now under the umbrella at Warner Bros., and we're working it out. It's not a done deal, but I'm hoping that's my next movie. My favorite thing about the story is that it's about the last man on earth who is not a man yet, he's a boy. He's still a man-child. He has to become a man on this journey. I don't want to say it's a post-apocalyptic story, but it does have that feel. Every man, everything in their world that is male, in fact, dies. Everything with the Y chromosome dies, except for this one guy, Yorick, and his pet monkey, Ampersand. It's about them and this embattled world of women and the women who come after him."
Caruso made a big commercial breakthrough last year with "Disturbia,"a film that started LaBeouf's career-shaping run of big-time roles. He and the star clearly have built a rapport together. I got to watch them on the set in Los Angeles early this year and in talking to Caruso then it was very clear that the director has found his screen muse in LaBeouf. Caruso sounds absolutely locked in on the 22-year-old actor as his on-screen version of Yorick, the last man on Earth.
"Shia wants to be Yorick. So we're talking about reuniting again. I know he needs a little bit of a break but this looks like it will fit for him. He's perfect casting. Even if I did know him and hadn't worked with him, it's pretty clear that he's perfect. He is Yorick. Yorick has a sense of humor, he's self-deprecating, he has this wonderful relationship with 355, who is the female super agent. Ultimately I want that relationship to be very similar to Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin in 'Midnight Run.'"
And what about that key plot change?
'Disturbia' is a ripoff of 'Rear Window,' lawsuit claims
When the sleeper hit "Disturbia" hit theaters last year, every major movie review of it mentioned the Alfred Hitchcock classic "Rear Window" and with good reason: The makers of "Disturbia" clearly delighted in paying homage to 1954 thriller with their plot and plenty of little touches.
But when exactly does winking homage turn into cinematic thievery?
Attorneys for the estate of the late Sheldon Abend (one of the true characters in Hollywood; more on him in a moment) filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on Monday in Manhattan. The suit names Dreamworks, Paramount Pictures, executive producer Steven Spielberg and others involved in the making of "Disturbia" and claims they essentially made a remake of "Rear Window" without bothering to pay for the rights to the source material. (Here's a bare-bones Associated Press story on the suit, and a meatier Reuters article.)
You can't watch "Disturbia" and not think of "Rear Window": Both present a confined voyeurs (one by injury, one by house-arrest electronic cuff) who spy on their neighbors by staring down through their windows. One neighbor, it turns out, may be a murderer, but can the voyeur prove it and also keep a distance from the danger?
The sublime 1954 film, which starred Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly and Raymond Burr, was based on "It Had to Be Murder," a short story by Cornell Woolrich from 1942. Woolrich died in 1968 and the rights to the story were bought by Abend.
Abend, who was a boxer and a tug-boat coal-stoker before entering the literary and film world, died in 2003. He represented the author estates of Tennessee Williams, George Bernard Shaw and Damon Runyon, and with his Stetson hat and out-sized persona he seemed like one of the latter's colorful characters. Gary North wrote a very interesting obituary of Abend for Daily Variety that discusses a previous lawsuit involving "Rear Window" as a property that set a notable precedent. Abend was on the winning side that time, we'll see how it turns out for his estate.
It's hardly new in Hollywood to cop someone else's idea. In fact, here's a whole photo gallery of "non-remake" remakes that was compiled by Patrick Kevin Day, a good friend to the Hero Complex. But "Disturbia" does seem like one of the most brazen examples of "borrowing" the story and spirit of a film, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
The timing of the lawsuit is probably uncomfortable since the "Disturbia" team -- led by executive producer Spielberg, director D.J. Caruso and star Shia LaBeouf -- are back on Sept. 26 with "Eagle Eye," a high-tech thriller. I visited the set earlier this year, I've seen a good chunk of the film, and what did it's man-on-the-run premise instantly remind me of? That would be "North by Northwest."
