The Black List is a Hollywood insider tradition dating back to the ancient times of 2005 (you know, back when we all thought, if only for one innocently hopeful second, that Episode III might just be a little bit better than I or II and that the new Batmobile looked waaaay stupid). Every year, a group of executives in charge of development at various studios submit lists of the screenplays they read that year that they liked the most… but that also didn’t actually get greenlit for an actual movie. Topping this year’s list are a sports insider drama, the true-crime story of the disappearance of the Beaumont Children, and a bio-pic about Theodore Geisel (that is, Dr. Seuss) and his wife Helen.
And there’s also a bio-pic of our current Secretary of State.
The script, written over four months, after reading dozens of Clinton biographies, by one Young Il Kim, is described in the list as follows:
During the height of the Watergate scandal, rising star Hillary Rodham is the youngest lawyer chosen for the House Judiciary Committee to Impeach Nixon, but she soon finds herself forced to choose between a destined path to the White House and her unresolved feelings for Bill Clinton, her former boyfriend who now teaches law in Arkansas.
The title? Rodham.
Kim says he was inspired to write the script after seeing the famous picture of White House luminaries watching the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s house.
That photo… made me remember another photo… There was this photo of Hillary when she was in her 20s with coke-bottle glasses and long, hippie hair… And it was those two images that really made me realize that this would be a great way into this story just to focus on a moment in her life when she’s in her 20s, and she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life.
Likely Kim is talking about a picture not dissimilar to this one. I’m not sure how I feel about the project. It’s hard to tell if the script focuses hard on aspects of Ms. Clinton’s young life that contrast sharply with her image as Secretary of State, or if Politico is simply highlighting them. Frankly, we already know how this story ends, so the presentation of the journey is going to hold the real message of the film. But I can see value in a story that says that even young twenty something women who feel like they don’t have everything figured out in love or their careers can become Secretary of State and very nearly become the first female presidential candidate to be nominated by a major party.
The script has a production company already, so it may stand a chance of being made in 2013 or ’14. Worth a text, maybe?
(via Jezebel.)
