JA from MNPP here. It seems like it's the dream of every young actor to play one of the Beats - sensitive yet masculine fellows in sharp clothes with pre-praised snappy dialogue: what could go wrong? Well... they were kind of all having sex with each other for one, and that keeps the money-men away. So the budgets stay tiny, pre-production gets drawn way out, and names come and go, come and go. I've been following the news on one of these projects for awhile - Kill Your Darlings first blipped onto my radar back in 2009, when it was announced that Chris Evans was going to play Jack Kerouac. That's the sort of headline that grabs my attention, you see.
William S Burroughs, Lucien Carr and Allen Ginsberg
KYD is about the sordid story at the start of the Beats, involving the poet Lucien Carr who was friends with Kerouac and William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Carr murdered a man named David Kammerer, supposedly because Kammerer came onto him. That gay-panic defense seems somewhat unlikely given the fact that Ginsberg maintained he'd had sex with Carr, but you can read more about the background to the story here.
Besides Chris Evans, KYD was originally going to have Ben Whishaw playing Carr and Jesse Eisenberg was going to play Allen Ginsberg. Then silence. Who knows what iterations of actors came after that, but the next thing we heard was two and a half years later, this past November that is, when Daniel Radcliffe was announced as set to play Ginsberg.
Well a couple of days ago we got more casting news. A lot more, actually. Young Leonardo DiCaprio doppleganger Dane DeHaan, who just topped the box office this month in the generally well-received found-footage movie Chronicle, is set to play the murderer Lucien Carr. Dexter's Michael C. Hall will be playing the victim, David Kammerer. Elizabeth Olsen is set to play Carr's girlfriend Edie. The great Ben Foster is playing William Burroughs, while Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kyra Sedgwick are set to play...we don't know who. Somebodies!
Michael C Hall (a victim for once?) and Dane DeHaan
Jack Huston | Jack Kerouac
Finally Jack Huston, of yes those Hustons, is going to play Jack Kerouac.