If you ever thought Call Me By Your Name would somehow make a good double bill with Pineapple Express, you’re in luck. Luca Guadagnino, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg are teaming up for a narrative adaptation of Matt Tyrnauer‘s documentary, Scotty And The Secret History Of Hollywood.
The film will revolve around Scotty Bowers, a WWII Marine combat veteran who fought at the Battle of Iwo Jima and became a legendary bisexual male hustler and date-arranger for gay Hollywood movie stars from the 1940s until the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
The documentary, first released in 2017, was itself based on Bowers’ own book, Full Service: My Adventures In Hollywood And The Secret Sex Lives Of The Stars. Bowers arranged same-sex meet-ups for famous clientele under cover of a gas station in Hollywood for decades.
However, despite the headline-grabbing nature of the story, it’s primarily about one of the first people to create a safe space for gay people in the industry at a time when such things ended careers, and sometimes more.
Although Guadagnino, Rogen and Goldberg sound like an odd trio on paper, this sounds like a great story that could play to their strengths really well. We saw Guadagnino’s talent for hidden romance in Call Me By Your Name, as well as his consistent eye for expressive images in all his work. Rogen and Goldberg have always been great at not only comedy, but finding heartfelt humour within characterisation.
When the film will actually go into production is another story. Also, Guadagnino has a lot on his plate, having been attached to multiple projects in the last year, including remakes of Scarface and Lord Of The Flies. He’s also got an HBO series, We Are Who We Are, premiering in September. We’ll see when he finds room for this one.
Rogen and Goldberg remain executive producers on Amazon’s The Boys, which has season two arriving also in September. Rogen will next be seen on screen in HBO Max’s strange looking comedy, An American Pickle.
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