After making his screenwriting and directorial debut with the 2008 short film titled “X” starring his daughter Eden, Josh Brolin is reportedly looking to return to the typewriter and camera with an adaptation of Dominique Cieri‘s acclaimed play “Pitz & Joe.”
Updated: Reps for Brolin tell us that Maya Forbes (“Monsters vs Aliens,” “The Rocker” and several episodes of the the excellent “The Larry Sanders Show“) is actually writing the adaptation and the project will be a vehicle for Brolin to both helm and star in. The project is currently set up over at Warner Bros.
Pajiba reports that the actor is “interested” in adapting the play which is based on playwright Cieri’s own experiences and is described as a “two-character drama about a young woman and her brain-damaged brother.” Set five years after the brother’s accident, the story apparently uses flashbacks to explore with greater detail the relationship between the two titular characters, a divorced painter and a onetime junkie who was severely brain-damaged in a motorcycle accident five years before, who team together in the latter’s recovery.
“It’s a beautiful blend of the past, and how you work through the past to get to the future,” was how director Stephen Burdman once described Cieri’s play. “The reason it’s so beautiful is that it’s deep set in true family love. To me, it’s about being alive. But it’s not goo-goo sweet. It’s bittersweet but light, charming. Nicki’s writing is inspired; it has the poetry of Bruce Springsteen lyrics.”
Sounds like a gritty and potentially emotionally deep tale of sibling love that would make for a fairly ambitious project for a first-time writer-director to be chasing. Brolin, though, has been working with the capable likes of the Coen Brothers, Woody Allen, Oliver Stone, Paul Haggis and Robert Rodriguez recently, so hopefully he’s learnt a thing or two.
The actor is currently shooting “Men In Black III” (yes, we’re aware how that probably reads after we lavished praise on his choice of collaborators) but has the Coens’ latest effort “True Grit” hitting theaters this Christmas, thriller “Somewhere In The Dark” with Kristen Stewart in the works and possibly a role in Jason Reitman‘s adaptation of Joyce Maynard‘s “Labor Day.” All that for an actor whose career highlight not that long ago was still “The Goonies.”
josh on stage