Rush Limbaugh Biopic In The Works: Calling James Gandolfini!
Yesterday, Deadline reported that a film biography of Rush Limbaugh is now in the script phase. Instantly after the report, conservative talk-radio fans, lovers of scandalous biopics, and the people who sell product placement to cigar companies alike all lifted their heads to the heavens and thanked their lucky stars that this blessed day had finally arrived. Perhaps that this is just part of some very complex wedding present. In other news, we can only assume the phones of James Gandolfini, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Craig T. Nelson, and John Goodman’s agents have all been ringing off the hook.
The film is being adapted from the unauthorized Limbaugh biography The Rush Limbaugh Story: Talent on Loan from God which was written by journalist Paul Colford. That book has been optioned by writer/producer James Sclafani. When asked what his new film would be like, (liberal) Sclafani compared it to Oliver Stone’s recent Bush biopic W. Hoo boy.
From Deadline:
“Sclafani said the script he’s written is a close cousin to the Oliver Stone-directed George W. Bush feature W, in that he tries to get beneath the surface politics and controversies and down to the ambition and demons that drove Limbaugh’s success. The film will include contradictions that have gone against his radio diatribes, from the dubious 4-F draft status during Vietnam (unearthed in Colford’s book) to a get-tough stance against drug abusers that was contradicted by the revelation that he himself was addicted to prescription painkillers and got them illegally.
‘This is Citizen Kane meets Private Parts, where you have a man who always had trouble relating to people in the outside world, but does it effortlessly in the booth,’ said Sclafani, adding that Limbaugh is the proverbial fat kid, ignored in high school, and determined to prove everyone they were wrong about him. ‘There’s this anecdote about a game of spin the bottle in high school. The bottle pointed at him, and the pretty girl who was supposed to kiss him ran away, and that stayed with him,’ Sclafani said. ‘When he came up in radio, he was culturally opposed to everything happening in the 60s and 70s, and all this left him with something to prove. He is an underdog, and became an extremely determined person with something to prove.'”
Consider our tickets already bought.
Deadline makes sure to point out that Limbaugh is in no way involved with the film. He also wasn’t involved with the book it’s based on but he didn’t try to stop it either. A major motion picture might be a different story.
As of yet, there are no indications of when the movie would come out or who would take the plum lead role (Come on comments section, lets hear some suggestions. Keep in mind that they have to cast both a thin and a less-thin Limbaugh. Maybe they’ll only have one. But which one? Not since the debate over the Elvis stamp has the country been faced with such a torturous decision). There are also no indications whether or not the film would be in any way related to the previous Limbaugh films, the Rush Hour trilogy, which detailed the radio host’s past career as a fast talking black detective.
Really though, we just hope it contains a scintillating dramatization of this story.
ps. Congrats to Rush and Kathryn!
