— Author: Charley Brady —
Here at Silent Cinema Galway, we are enormous fans – and how could we not be? – of the great Buster Keaton. So, the news (in the January 19th edition of Variety magazine) that actor Rami Malek is involved in talks with Warner Bros. Television to play the comedy legend is of enormous interest and excitement to us.
Malek is one of the most dependable actors around and his list of awards is intimidating, to put it mildly: he has won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as numerous nominations.
Now I know what some of you are thinking. If this guy is so good, how come he was the most boring James Bond villain ever in No Time to Die a couple of years back? To which I can only reply that you have to work with the script you are given – and in this case, it wasn’t much of one.
But just to mention a single instance I’ll throw out his much-lauded - and deservedly so - performance as Freddie Mercury in Bryan Singer’s 2018 Bohemian Rhapsody. And in the final fifteen minutes of that film where the Live Aid concert is recreated, if you didn’t have shivers up your spine just watching Malek then you most likely don’t have a spine to send shivers up in the first place.
If – and I’m cautiously optimistic – this limited series goes ahead, it promises to be a very polished, professional affair. Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Batman) will be directing and co-producing with Malek also taking on the role of co-producer. And it will be based on James Curtin’s massive 2022 biography Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life.
We’ll keep you posted as to developments. Fingers are crossed here, as with those prominent eyes of his Malek is already halfway there.
And if he immerses himself in Keaton to anything like the extent he did with Mercury we are in for a treat indeed.