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Gossip Update: Call My Age-nt!
H'w'd Flick's May-Dec Kudos Hopes
Ankled By Indie Cast Announce
by Alan Benson
Even before Hollywood's latest May-December romance flick, "Autumn in New York," opens, its novelty point — the casting of an aging male matinee idol against a nubile young actress — has already been outdone.
The flick features Winona Ryder (29) as a young woman improbably in love with Richard Gere (who will celebrate 51 shortly after the movie opens). The film is said to be a wonderful celebration of love between a woman and a man who was 35 when the aforementioned woman entered puberty.
According to the tipsheets, "Autumn in New York" was shaping up as this summer's "A Perfect Murder" (Michael Douglas, 54, and Gwyneth Paltrow, 25), "Entrapment" (Sean Connery, 69, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, 30), or "Six Days, Seven Nights" (Harrison Ford, 56, and Anne Heche, 30).
But all that changed when VGG Films broke the secrecy surrounding their summer offering, "Zombie Perv: A Love Story." The film features Mary-Kate Olsen, 14, as a cemetery keeper's daughter who falls head over heels for "Gramps," a reanimated corpse played (in a marvelous piece of casting) by the actual reanimated corpse of William Hickey, who was 69 when he died in 1997.
At a press conference announcing the casting, VGG Films Executive Producer Rob Terrell said his "this proves that the big boys of Hollywood are simply afraid to take chances."
"Sure, they can cast inappropriately and play to aging Boomer males' fears about their waning virility by implying they can still get hot young chicks, but if you want really creepy casting, you have to look to the indies," he said.
Olsen was visibly excited about the chance to play her first romantic role opposite the noted star of such films as "Prizzi's Honor," "One Crazy Summer," and "The Jerky Boys."
"This oughta show that bitch Ashley who's the talented one," she said.
Hickey's reaction was more reserved.
"Brains! Must feast on brains! Get agent on phone, have him bring brains! Also, me want more points on this deal," he ululated.
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