According to the South China Morning Post, January 12, 1998
Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise might want to get themselves into a karaoke bar
and start swinging to "Mack the Knife."
Both actors are on the short list
to play crooner Bobby Darin.
For several years now, director Barry Levinson has pictured Depp as Darin,
but now that James Toback has handed in a searing new script,
studio
insiders say Warner Brothers may try to re-team Levinson with "Rain Man"
star Cruise.
Toback is staying out of the casting but thinks that the story of the
Bronx-born singer, who died at age 37 after scoring hits like
"Dream Lover"
and "Beyond the Sea," is made for the movies.
"He was operating under a sense of doom," says Toback. "Because of his
heart condition, he was supposed to die before he was 16.
He overheard a
doctor say that. He felt he was living on borrowed time. So he pushed
things to the limit."
The swinging nightclub star found a soulmate in Sandra Dee, the original
Gidget. Wed in 1960, they looked like perfection.
But Toback notes: "Both
of them had dark driving forces."
In 1991, Dee revealed that her stepfather sexually molested her from the age of 8 till she was 14.
"She and her parents would sleep in the same bed," says Toback.
"We don't
show that, but we refer to it. It had a central effect on her life, and on
Bobby's.
"He sang 'Back Street Girl' better than Mick Jagger," syas Toback. "He
changed to beads and sandals. But he got lost in the cultural shift.
We
have a scene where he gets booed off the stage in Las Vegas during the
Vietnam War when he tried to sing 'A Simple Song of Freedom.'
He came back
the next year and got a standing ovation."
According to the New York Daily News, December 30, 1997
"Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise might want to get themselves into a karaoke bar
and start swinging to "Mack the Knife."
Both actors are on the short list to
play crooner Bobby Darin.
For several years now, director Barry Levinson has pictured Depp as Darin,
but now that James Toback has handed in a searing new script,
studio insiders
say Warner Brothers may try to re-team Levinson with "Rain Man" star Cruise.
Drew Barrymore has the inside track to play Sandra Dee, who at 53 has struggled for
years with anorexia and drug and alcohol abuse.
Having authorized the couple's
son, Dodd Darin, to write a memoir of their marriage, she is also supporting
Levinson's film and
hoping to write a bio, titled Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee."
According to a December 24, 1997, article by Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith in the Los Angeles Daily News:
"Levinson, who has been working for years to bring the story of late pop
singer Bobby Darin to screen, thinks he's finally close.
He tells this column
that writer James Toback has finished the script for the drama - and that he
hopes to be making the movie come summer."
Still more news that was posted in the Bobby Darin Fan Forum in late 1997 by a unknown person.
"These are the supposed facts as told to me by a friend, who's friend was involved in the pre-pre-production: