In an ideal world, Mimi Baird would be walking red carpets this movie-awards season in support of Tony Kushner’s film adaptation of He Wanted the Moon, Baird’s best-selling memoir about her brilliant and troubled father.
In the world as it is, the Woodstock author will bundle up Friday evening for a drive to Tunbridge Public Library, where she’ll give a progress report on her story’s long march toward the silver screen.
“I’ve never experienced Hollywood before,” Baird said on Thursday morning. “It’s quite a learning experience. I have had the distinct pleasure of being with (Kushner) on many occasions in his research. There have been lots of emails and notes and long phone calls. What I can say for sure is that the screenplay should be done before the winter is over.”
If that schedule holds, it will still mark a quicker turnaround than Kushner’s last big movie project, for Steven Spielberg.
“It took him seven years to write the screenplay for Lincoln,” Baird said of the 2013 biopic that won a best actor Oscar for Daniel Day-Lewis. “He’s very passionate about what he writes, very meticulous.”
When Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company first started talking with Baird in 2015 about an adaptation, in which Pitt would portray Perry Baird, “I asked how long they thought it might take. They said four years. I was 77 at the time, and I gasped on the phone. I said, ‘Oh, my word! I want to live to see the story come to life on film.’ ”
Four years later, she continued, “We’re about to take some giant steps.”
Mimi Baird talks about the pending movie adaptation of her and co-author Eve Claxton’s book,
During this three-week homestretch to the Academy Awards, the Hopkins Center in Hanover will be screening all the nominated short films as well as several feature-length movies up for Oscars in a number of categories.
The parade begins this weekend with the best picture nominees The Favourite and Bohemian Rhapsody, and foreign film nominee Shoplifters.
The Favourite, which co-stars best supporting actress nominees Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone as ladies-in-waiting vying, in the early 1700s, for the, um, favour, of England’s troubled Queen Anne, portrayed by best actress nominee Olivia Colman. Screenings are scheduled for 7 on Friday and Saturday nights at Loew Auditorium, in Dartmouth College’s Black Center for the Visual Arts.
Also on Saturday night at 7 in Spaulding Auditorium, the Hop will host a sing-a-long version of Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic about the 1970s rock band Queen and equal-parts charismatic and troubled lead singer, Freddie Mercury.
On Sunday afternoon at 4 at Loew, the Hop will screen Shoplifters, Japan’s entry in the best foreign film category. The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for its story of a family of scam artists who take in an abandoned child.
The shorts will be screened over the subsequent two weekends at Loew Auditorium, starting next Friday night at 7 with the nominated documentaries Black Sheep, A Night at the Garden, End Game, Period. End of Sentence and Lifeboat.
On Feb. 9 and again on Feb. 16 at Loew, the package of animated shorts (Bao, Late Afternoon, Animal Behaviour, Weekends and One Small Step) runs at 5 p.m., followed by the live-action nominees (Madre, Fauve, Marguerite, Detainment and Skin) at 8 p.m.
And on Feb. 14 and 15, the Hop If Beale Street Could Talk will be screened at Loew. Director Barry Jenkins, whose Moonlight won the 2017 Best Picture Oscar, is up for an Academy Award for his adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel about the impact on a family in Harlem of the jailing of a young man. And Regina King is a nominee for best supporting actress for her portrayal of the incarcerated man’s fiancee,
To reserve tickets ($5 to $8 for the full-length features, $5 to $10 for the packages of shorts), visit hop.dartmouth.edu/Online/film or call 603-646-2422.
Prepare for a stampede to the Billings Farm and Museum on Feb. 9, when the Woodstock Vermont Film Series screens All the Wild Horses, the 2017 documentary that follows riders from the United States, Canada, South Africa, Ireland and the United Kingdom through the grueling, 600-plus-mile Mongol Derby across central Asia. Even with two showings, at 3 and then 5:30 p.m., odds are that horse-happy residents of greater Woodstock, especially endurance riders, will beat procrastinators to the limited number of seats available in the museum’s cozy theater. To reserve tickets ($6 to $11) and learn more, call 802-457-2355 or visit billingsfarm.org/filmfest.
Pentangle Arts resumes its Thank You Thursday series of classic movies this month at the Woodstock Town Hall Theatre. On Thursday night at 7:30 comes The Gay Divorcee, the 1934 romantic comedy featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
While admission is free to both films, donations are welcome.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.