First Showing (via ONTD) has a nice first look at Russell Crowe’s “look” in State of Play. The film, directed by Kevin MacDonald (Last King of Scotland) is described this way on IMDb, “Based on the BBC mini-series of the same title, a team of investigative reporters work alongside a police detective to try to solve the murder of a congressman’s mistress.”
I really hope that voters have forgiven Russell Crowe. It was a horrifying thing to watch him utterly ignored for giving two of the finest performances last year, (I don’t know what Christian Bale ever did, though, to find himself completely ignored either).
The film also stars Ben Affleck, currently in career turnaround. This being the internet age, someone who worked on the film wrote this last week, ‚ÄúI thought it was cool at first that I was cast as a ‚Äòdelivery guy,‚Äô as opposed to being just another passerby, but in the end, I was just a douchebag wearing a UPS uniform.‚Äù His girlfriend recounts the rest of the details about the shoot that day, “Mike didn‚Äôt get to see Ben Affleck or Helen Mirren but he did get a few glimpses of Russell Crowe, who he said looked (in his role as an investigative reporter for the fictional Washington Globe) like a slightly healthier Christopher Hitchens.”
“From what he can gather, the scene involves Russell Crowe going in to Ben‚Äôs Chili Bowl, ordering a chili cheese dog, and then something happens involving a woman they‚Äôd made up to look more or less like she was dying of herpes, and Crowe almost gets hit by a car, and in the meantime his briefcase disappears.”
Lol. You can read all of the inexplicably interesting details of that day, here.
I wish I had seen this when it played on the BBC back in 2003 – it even has James McAvoy in it. As luck would have it, the whole miniseries is available on Amazon for $25. Here is a clip off of YouTube:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFMwIMJjuQs[/youtube]