It’s rare when an actor is concerned not by the length of a role but instead, by the girth. With Chapter 27 we get a better understanding for the type of preparation that needs to take place in order to gain more latitude for a given role and while I’ve got no clue if the real Mark David Chapman was in the plus size, via the film’s myspace page we see the transformation that skinny-framed Jared Leto underwent to get into character.
Borrowing a cue from the Dunkin Donuts diet that DeNiro went thru with Raging Bull, Leto consumes this character in a selection of murky, solitary interior shots of a run down hotel room. I caught this morbid, indie project sometime around the tail-end of 07’s Sundance edition and find that even the most hardcore of Leto fans will find it difficult to empathize with a character that reminds of the Sgt. Gomer Pile from Full Metal sequence where he cracks an empties a pair of shells in the bathroom.
Even if IFC films programmed competing project The Killing of John
Lennon earlier in the year, Peach Arch Releasing are still taking a shot with Jarrett Schaeffer’s directorial debut – aiming perhaps towards younger audiences old enough to have read Catcher in the Rye and who know both of the acting leads.
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