No, it's not the 'stache playing tricks on you -- he really is badass.
Every Day Should Be Saturday was on-the-ball enough to bring us the news of an impending big-screen adaptation of the late, great "Magnum, P.I." TV series. Orson and Stranko seem to be convinced that this is a horrible idea, and given the clockwork awfulness of most old TV shows turned into movies, I'm not about to call their fears unfounded. However, I'm willing to hold out hope for the potential awesomeness of a Magnum movie, with one caveat: The movie has to star Tom Selleck in the title role. Has to! If it does, I'm there. If not, I will not only refuse to see the movie but also organize a full-scale nationwide boycott.
My early childhood TV viewing included a steady diet of "Magnum" thanks to my mom, who thought Tom Selleck was teh hott and who also happened to, at the time, be married to a dude who bore a striking resemblance to The Selleck himself. (Small vestiges of this resemblance continued throughout his life, though Dad pretty much forfeited any claim to Selleck-ness when he got rid of his 'stache a couple years ago.) So anyway, it's hard for me not to look upon the character of Thomas Magnum, and therefore The Selleck himself, as a complete badass. Living (by all appearances) rent-free on a massive estate in Hawaii, driving a Ferrari, bedding hot chicks, solving crimes? Every red-blooded male out there, whether he's aware of it or not, strives to live that kind of life.
But my greater point is that nobody other than Selleck can do justice to this role. Various folks in the EDSBS thread suggested people like George Clooney, who is also badass, but my question is, why can't Selleck carry this movie? OK, so maybe his resume over the past few years has been mostly made-for-TV work, but this cat has charisma out the Hawaiian wazoo ("Three Men and a Baby"? That season of "Friends" where he was shagging Courtney Cox? C'mon, people!) and deserves a starring role in something like the "Magnum" movie to be to his career what, say, "Pulp Fiction" was to Travolta's.
As for the rest of the casting, I'm not sure what the producers should do and they're certainly not soliciting my opinion, but here are my thoughts based on personal preferences and what I picked up in the EDSBS thread:
Straight-up casting
Higgins: Ricky Gervais ("The Office")
T.C.: Ving Rhames ("Out of Sight")
Rick: Jeremy Piven ("Grosse Pointe Blank")
Indie-cred casting
Higgins: Ben Kingsley ("Sexy Beast")
T.C.: Andre Braugher ("Get On the Bus")
Rick: Paul Giamatti ("Sideways")
Swing-for-the-fences, outside-the-box casting
Higgins: John Cleese ("Monty Python")
T.C.: Andre Patton (Big Boi of OutKast)
Rick: Zach Braff ("Scrubs")
Just my ideas, of course. But the one constant has to be The Selleck. No compromises on this one, kids. Feel free to make your own casting suggestions (and/or predictions of the movie's probable greatness/suckitude) in the comments thread.
8 comments:
Prepare to be pissed, because the most Selleck is getting is a cameo. It'll probably be some doucheface like Ben Stiller.
I read that they're going to play it straight, updating it to be a badass mo-fo of a show. I pitch:
Higgins=Michael Gambon
Rick=Mark Wahlberg
TC=Terrence Howard
Tom would have to be 1st pick, but absent that decision, I'd go for the cast of Dodgeball.
Vince Vaughn AKA Peter La Fleur as Magnum
Rip Torn AKA Patches O'Houlihan as Higgons
Alan Tudyk AKA Steve the Pirate as Rick
Deviate from Dodgeball and pick Donald Faison AKA Turk from Scrubs as TC
Back to Dodgeball Ben Stiller as the villian Dirty Sanchez (the name of the bar from Dodgeball.
Of all the 80's TV I drank beer and watched in college that I would suggest the big screen treatment for, Magnum P.I. ain't it...
The more movie producers ruin quasi classic TV by turning it into crap movies (yeah, I'm talkin' 'bout Dukes of Hazard, Starskey and Hutch, Dragnet etc.) the less likly it is that really great TV that would stand a chance at being an entertaining film will not be made as the public grows weary of the shit parade.
And what shows am I, the great seer of all that is culturly relevant refering to??
"Remmington Steele" and "The A-Team". They made up the heart and soul of Tuesday nights for many a half drunk collegian in the early 80's.
Just a note: Mom is still actually married to the man who bore such a strong resemblance to The Selleck; the resemblance was "at the time," but the marriage, thankfully, remains current.
And I have seen no evidence indicating that Jeremy Piven and Paul Giamatti are not, in fact, the same person.
I'm not ashamed to say I enjoyed the "Dukes of Hazzard" movie, though if you asked me to recap it for you, my answer would probably be "Well, Jessica Simpson wore a pink bikini, and . . . actually, I don't remember much of the rest of it."
And incidentally, I saw "Starsky & Hutch" just the other day (I watched it with a friend of mine, mainly as a nothing-better-to-do type of activity). I actually didn't hate it, though I'm glad I didn't pay $8.25 to see it in the theatre.
Eddie Izzard as Higgins, though if the talks-real-fast-Micromachines guy is still alive I think it should be him.
Omar Epps as TC, with Will Arnett (Gob from Arrested Development) as Rick.
Somehow Shatner's gotta be involved but I don't know where.
Magnum was Awesome and still is.
It needs to come to the Big or Small Screen and soon.
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