In this country*, American stand-up comic Demetri Martin is perhaps best known for winning the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 2003; or for his appearance in the last episode of the brilliant Flight Of The Conchords.
But that’s about to change, in a big way. For Martin has been busy carving out something of a movie career of late, flogging two pitches which are currently being turned into movies – Will, which is at DreamWorks, and Moon People, which is at Columbia.
And today it was announced that he’s in negotiations to play the lead role in the latest film by none other than Ang Lee. So clearly, it’s time to sit up and take notice.
The Lee film in question is Taking Woodstock, which will be based on a memoir by Elliot Tiber, in which Martin will play a closeted gay man working at his parents’ motel in the Catskill Mountains, who inadvertently sets into motion the events that led to the Woodstock concert in 1969.
The movie has been set up at Focus, which is, of course, run by James Schamus, Lee’s long-time screenwriter. And, as you might have guessed, Schamus is currently beavering away on the script of a movie which sounds to us like it could be another 180-degree shift for Lee.
His last film, Lust, Caution, was an elegant spy drama dipped in raunch, while this seems like a whimsical comedy, which might allow Lee to examine the mindset of the late Sixties in much the same way that he skewered the 70s with The Ice Storm. Of course, only time will tell. But Martin is a likeable presence, and we wish him well.
American readers will know that Martin appears regularly on The Daily Show, and indeed Jon Stewart has taken him under his wing somewhat, with a Stewart-produced Martin show, Important Things With Demetri Martin, set for later this year.