You know James Woods as the guy who pops up as baddies in movies as varied as Videodrome and, uh, The Rudy Giuliani Story, so try not to be concerned when I tell you that he has big plans for Kristen Stewart. Coming Soon caught up with him on the set for the upcoming Straw Dogs remake, and he talked about his plans for his feature directorial debut, a drama called An American Girl.
And yes, he's planning for Stewart to star. There's no confirmation from Stewart's camp about that, of course, but Woods seems certain it's happening. And it's quite a role for her-- drugs, sex, the Marines and tragedy, all in two hours. Check out the plot, as Woods tells it:
"It's about a young woman who is really destructive. It's that magical time right after you're out of high school. She was the top swimmer and dive champion in school. Now it's a year later and she lives in a little town in Indiana and the place is dying, she's working in a grocery store and drinking and drugging too much and she's showing off in front of this guy who likes her, and gets involved in a big sex thing with two guys drunk one night at a quarry. She gets taped doing it on somebody's phone and in a small town, her reputation is ruined and on a drunken whim, she joins the Marines, which is ridiculous. The ironic thing is that along the way she starts learning these values she doesn't expect. They're just values like you take your brother, they take care of you. It's not like she's a gung-ho Marine. She starts to sober up and then she gets into the Linus Program because she's smart where they teach these women to speak Arabic. When they're in combat situations, women in the Muslim world were not comfortable talking to men soldiers but they'd talk to the women soldiers so these women learned to speak the language and would ask if there were arms or snipers in the house. A tragedy happens and when she comes back to the town where she was a disaster, she rebuilds her life and finds through this tragedy a greater value in herself. It's Coming Home, Best Years of our Lives, it's part of that trilogy. It's a phenomenal story and a slam-dunk Oscar for her."
Yes, he did just compare his movie to Best Years of Our Lives and Coming Home, and yes, he did just promise that the actress would win an Oscar for it. It's lots of big promises from a guy whose movie has not yet gone into production, but hey, it probably takes that kind of confidence to get anything made these days. We'd all love to see Stewart try acting for once, after blankly staring her way through the Twilight movies. Could this just-so-crazy-it-might-work project be the ticket?
