The entry begins:
Still Life With Monkey stars a very successful architect, Duncan Wheeler, 37, who has recently become a quadriplegic as the consequence of a car accident. He has an identical twin, Gordon, who has a very different personality and life. The able-bodied twin presents a dilemma for casting, because in principle I would dearly love to envisage an actor in the Duncan role who in real life uses a wheelchair. In nearly every film with a disabled character, able-bodied actors are cast in those roles. But if the same actor were also to play the part of the twin brother, which would be the obvious double-role casting for this movie, this presents a practical dilemma. However, I have the perfect solution in mind—if varieties of time travel are permitted. My dream casting for these two roles would in fact be the same actor: quadriplegic Christopher Reeve for Duncan Wheeler, and pre-accident Christopher Reeve for Gordon Wheeler. The spirit of Christopher Reeve definitely hovers over my novel. In 1981 I saw Christopher Reeve on Broadway when he starred in the Lanford Wilson play The Fifth of July in the role of a gay, paraplegic Vietnam veteran. (The riding accident that paralyzed him lay fourteen years in the future.) In the play there is a running reference to a plan for sprinkling someone’s ashes in the penstemon.Visit Katharine Weber's website.
For Duncan’s wife Laura, the third (human) star of this movie, I would cast...[read on]
The Page 99 Test: Triangle.
The Page 69 Test: True Confections.
The Page 99 Test: The Memory of All That.
Writers Read: Katharine Weber.
My Book, The Movie: Still Life With Monkey.
--Marshal Zeringue
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