Eliza Dushku, Movie Producer, Casts Her Brother As Robert Mapplethorpe

Let's get the Dollhouse plug out of the way on line one. Watch it. Support it. Thanks for listening, I'm here all week, try the veal.

Eliza Dushku, star of the upcoming Joss Whedon TV show Dollhouse (there I go again) is producing a biopic of artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Her genius casting for the lead role is her brother Nate, who she claims has an uncanny likeness to the perennially controversial photographer. I've conjoined them into some kind of unholy chimera in the image above, however badly, so you can judge for yourself.Robert Mapplethorpe was born in 1946, the third of six children. He remembered a very secure childhood on Long Island, which he summed up by saying, "I come from suburban America. It was a very safe environment, and it was a good place to come from in that it was a good place to leave."During the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe's photographs began a shift toward a phase of refinement of subject and an emphasis on classical formal beauty. During this period he concentrated on statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and formal portraits of artists and celebrities.What they aren't telling you is, frankly, the good stuff. I suppose I too should only point you off-site to the juice, this very possibly being neither the time or the place for a debate about aesthetics and politics (though, I'd very possibly believe that's the entire point of a film website if you wanted to make the case).

As Ms. Dushku's deal with the Mapplethorpe estate was only closed this past week, there's nothing more to report as yet but I suppose, in the meantime, I'll slot this film into the third position of my list of anticipated films spawned from the art world right behind 1) Big Eyes and 2) Happy Tears.