With the addition of Ashley Greene of Twilight to the CBGB cast, we also get a better sense of the script.
From Variety‘s Ashley Greene rocks ‘CBGB’ lead:
Ashley Greene, who plays Alice Cullen in the blockbuster “Twilight Saga,” has landed the female lead in Randall Miller’s “CBGB,” the story of the influential New York music venue and its impact on the punk rock scene.
Greene is in talks to play Lisa Kristal, the daughter of CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, who will be played by Alan Rickman.
Script depicts the younger Kristal as a fiery young woman who frequently clashes with her father but ends up working as the business manager of his club. She later attended law school to help her dad keep CBGB afloat before it shuttered in 2008. Kristal, who is now known as Lisa Kristal Burgman, controls the estate and is onboard to co-produce the indie pic.
There are obviously many great stories to tell about the now-defunct CBGB, but I can’t say that I’m too excited by this direction for the script. Obviously, it’s impossible to conclude too much without reading the entire screenplay and without seeing the final cut, but the behind-the-scenes family struggle seems less inherently interesting to me than Kristal’s interactions with bands, musicians, the general public, booking agents, critics, and so forth.
And there are clearly tricky questions raised when a film’s producer is also a character in the film.
I’ve never seen any of the Twilight saga, but I did see Greene (a 25-year old Jacksonville native) in 2011 in Butter at the Savannah Film Festival. (I reviewed Butter here.) Greene was sharp and energetic as Jennifer Garner’s impulsive, sexually-experimenting daughter who at one point passionately kisses the stripper played by Olivia Wilde.
Click here to see a list of all my posts about CBGB, which is scheduled to begin filming in Savannah on June 25th.
Click here for Jason Kendall’s piece in today’s Savannah morning news about the efforts to make the film as realistic as possible.