Three are ‘Dying’ to be in ‘Elegy’

Less than a year ago, some of the critics at the NYTimes pulled out a “Best-of” list makring the best in literature in the past 25 years. On this compilation of top novels, the Pulitzer Prize-winning name of Philip Roth was perhaps the most crowned (his American Pastoral was among the tops) and thus perhaps this is one among one of several reasons why another of his books is getting fast-tracked to the big screen.

Today, The Hollywood Reporter reports that the MGM project is getting more crowded. Rounding out the cast of A-listers Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson are thesps Peter Sarsgaard, Dennis Hopper and Deborah Harry. Clarkson and Sarsgard worked together very recently and had an excellent on screen repour with Craig Lucas film The Dying Gaul.

The Lakeshore Entertainment pic to start lensing next month is based on Roth's novel “The Dying Animal” and scripted by Nicholas Meyer, Elegy sees cultural critic David Kepesh (Kingsley) finds his life — which he indicates is a state of “emancipated manhood” — thrown into tragic disarray by Consuela Castillo (Cruz), a well-mannered student who awakens a sense of sexual possessiveness in her teacher. Several years after the heartbreaking end of their relationship, she returns with a shocking revelation that forever changes his life.

Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet is helming the picture in Canada (Vancouver to me more precise). The Human Stain also a Roth novel, was shot in frigid Montreal back in 03’ and Coixet also made a film of her own there (in the big white north) – the Sarah Polley-starrer My Life Without Me.