The Original Charlie Kaufman

Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:

Waiting for Gabriel Byrne, Warner Bros. minus 1000, Julia Garner queen of pop, Ralph Fiennes’ demons, Aaron Schimberg’s face lift and a rat.

Let’s go!

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Dance First. Magnolia.

Samuel Beckett is one of the greatest playwrights of all time.

Giving us the absurd and profound Waiting for Godot, Embers, and Endgame. Beckett will now be portrayed by Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects) in the upcoming biopic Dance First.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Many parts of the literary Samuel Beckett giant's life: Parisian bon vivant, World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband and recluse. But despite all the adulation that came his way, he was a man acutely aware of his own failings.

What’s so wonderful about the trailer is we get two Becketts (each played by Gabriel Bryne) talking to each other.

The director James Marsh (The Theory of Everything) explained:

“The Otherworld is a constant in the film where Beckett escapes to this private, intellectual, cerebral world and has a dialogue with an alter ego ‘The Other Beckett’”

This dynamic recalls the twin writers in Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation.

That film, written by Charlie Kaufman, who has called Beckett one of his prime influencers, features two writers played by Nicolas Cage. 

One is Kaufman himself—an ultra-neurotic screenwriter given the impossible task of adapting a book on orchids—and his twin, who has taken on screenwriting as a light hobby and seems to be failing upward with great ease.

Read more about how Charlie Kaufman’s alter ego in Adaptation dovetails with Samuel Beckett’s in Dance First:

https://theindustry.co/p/samuel-becketts-shadow

Magnolia Pictures is releasing Dance First in theaters on August 9th.