Remember the days when you saw James Woods a lot? During the eighties and nineties he was a regular, reliable movie presence. Lately... not so much. But next year he'll be back in the remake of Straw Dogs, and if he gets his way, as he relates to Coming Soon, he'll soon be behind the camera, directing Kristen Stewart in An American Girl.
Woods personally bought the script from writers Tim Metcalfe (The Haunting in Connecticut) and Sean McCarthy, and told Stewart he wouldn't make it with anyone but her. Since reading it, Stewart is apparently as keen as Woods to get underway.
The story, to paraphrase Woods' own lengthy description, concerns an off-the-rails smalltown girl who runs away to join the marines after a drunken sex video incident ruins her reputation. She ends up learning Arabic as part of a military programme in which female soldiers elicit information from muslim women who won't talk to military men, and following an unspecified tragic incident, returns home for some sort of redemption.
GI Jane, or an oestrogen-injected Hurt Locker? "It's a phenomenal story," says Woods, "and a slam-dunk Oscar for Kristen." He's already spent time thrashing out details with Stewart and the writers, but says he's unlikely to take a role for himself, preferring to direct and produce. The next thing will be to find a studio...
Coming Soon's story also reveals a snippet of information about Woods' Straw Dogs character, who is named as "Tom Hedden, a smalltown Southern football coach turned alcoholic" who "causes trouble" for James Marsden and Kate Bosworth's Hollywood couple. Which sounds like a transposition of the Peter Vaughan role. Let's hope Woods hasn't shot himself in the foot with this one.