The Film Stage Speaks About Cosmopolis and Robert Pattinson

From Jonathan Sul­li­van at The Film Stage:

I’m going to just get this right out in the open: I don’t hate Robert Pat­tin­son. Sure, the Twi­light fran­chise is wretched, but that’s more the mate­r­ial than the per­son and his other roles (Remem­ber Me, the upcom­ing Water for Ele­phants) prove that he isn’t just a pretty boy who is going to ride the coat­tails of a beloved fran­chise; this man wants to actu­ally try. And as Dead­line reports, he’s get­ting another role to branch out in: Pat­tin­son has just signed on to play the lead in David Cronenberg‘s Cos­mopo­lis, based on the 2003 novel by Don DeLillo.

Cos­mopo­lis takes over the course of one day in the year 2000 and fol­lows young Eric Packer, a finan­cial wiz­ard who is tak­ing his fancy lim­ou­sine out to go get a hair­cut and is prep­ping to risk his entire for­tune on bet­ting against the rise of the Japan­ese yen. He keeps get­ting side­tracked though, as he runs into a protest, a pres­i­den­tial visit, and a rapper’s funeral which keeps traf­fic at a stand still. Dur­ing this time, he indulges in sadis­tic and voyeuris­tic thoughts and waxes philo­sophic about the state of the coun­try from the back of his limo. In layman’s terms, the guy’s kind of a douchebag. Pattinson will be play­ing this char­ac­ter, and it’s also been rumored that Mar­ion Cotil­lard and Paul Gia­matti have also signed on.

See that sounds great…for a novel. As for a movie, I don’t know if it will trans­late as well since what I’ve read up on it makes it sound like the main char­ac­ter just sits in his limo and does a bunch of mono­logues about assorted things. But then again, Cronenberg isn’t a hor­ri­ble direc­tor and I’ve got faith in his vision; not only is he direct­ing the movie, he’s also writ­ten the script for it so he’s got to have some­thing invested in the mate­r­ial. What I also like is that Pat­tin­son didn’t take this movie for the money or the glory; instead, he signed on because he admires not only the work of the direc­tor, but Don DeLillo‘s nov­els as well. It’s rea­sons like those that keep me root­ing for the pretty boy vam­pire; I just hope Cos­mopo­lis gives him the chance to shine.

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