Directors: March 2007 Archives

It's not often that a handsome movie star isn't the best looking man on the set. But that will be the case when Tom Cruise teams with Bryan Singer for an untitled thriller for Cruise's United Artists studio. Singer directed the first two "X-Men" movies and last summer's "Superman Returns." He is openly gay and about as handsome as they come. He is probably a hotter commodity right now in the movie business right now than Cruise himself after Tom's spate of bad publicity and strange behavior.
But I have a feeling that Cruise is poised to be the comeback kid with some good roles that have him being more than a superhero in an action film like "Minority Report" or "MI:3." Cruise is a good actor who has been nominated for three Academy Awards for "Magnolia," "Jerry Maguire" and "Born on the 4th of July." He is currently is co-starring with acting icons Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in his next movie "Lions for Lambs" to be followed by the project with Singer. The untitled movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is based on actual events and depicts an attempt to assassinate Adoilf Hitler at the height of World War II. Cruise had not intended to star in the film but during meetings, Singer became intrigued with the idea of Cruise as the film's central character and offered him the role.
Production is set to begin this summer and is not expected to interfere with the "Superman" sequel Singer is preparing.

Marc Malkin, who has a terrific Planet Gossip site on E!Online, has been running parts of a conversation he had with John Waters this week. What jumped out at me was the openly gay Waters reaction to Isaiah Washington going to some kind of rehab to get treatment for the homophobic remarks he made about co-star T.R. Knight. Waters says he wants to know what kind of rehab is it that Washington claims to have gone to for help.
"It's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard," he says. "Is there a racism rehab, too? Can the KKK people go there? Only in L.A.!"
Marc chatted with Waters in his Chateau Marmont hotel suite just a couple of days before the premiere of his new court TV show"'Til Death Do Us Part."
Waters first gained fame by shocking moviegoers with his outrageously funny—and dirty—"Pink Flamingos" and went on to make "Hairspray" and "Cry-Baby" among others.
"I look through my cable guide and, each month, at least four or five of my movies are on TV," he says. "Pink Flamingos is on the Sundance channel, which in many places is regular cable. It's not even like On Demand. So, many families will sit there together and up comes a singing a--hole!"
Inthe 1980s movie "Hairspray," the role of Edna Turnblad was played by cross-dressing Divine. It was then played by Harvey Fierstein in the Broadway production and will be played by John Travolta in the new movie musical version due out this summer.
"It's great," Waters says. "I'm about to be a grandfather. It's the third generation."
What would Divine think of Travolta taking on her part?
"He would snatch the part right from John's cold, dead fingers," Waters says. "But Divine would be 60 now. In my last movie [A Dirty Shame], he would have been Big Ethel—the grandmother!"