We definitely forgot about this one, but James Woods has been preparing his directorial debut and has had Kristen Stewart attached to star in the film for the past two years. Written by Tim Metcalfe (“Kalifornia“) and Sean McCarthy, the film is about a small town girl who is publicly humiliated and enlists in the army on a whim.
MTV caught up with Woods on the red carpet for Stewart’s latest “Welcome To The Rileys,” and he confirmed the film will shoot next year and had effusive praise for the star of his movie. “She’s been committed to it for two years now, and we’re just about ready to go now in the spring,” he told MTV News.
“Her insight into the script was so perceptive and prescient as it turns out that I was overwhelmed with what a true professional and what a true artist she was, beyond her talent,” Woods said. “She’s got a real brain for script analysis. She’s just been totally devoted throughout all this fame. It’s never dented her at all. She’s been terrific from day one up until this very minute.” He went on to add, “She has been steadfast and true in her commitment, which did not surprise me, because when I started working with her on the script, she was so insightful.” So yeah, you can say he’s glad to have her in the film.
As for the film, Woods spilled a wealth of details about the story to ComingSoon last year:
It’s about a young woman who is really destructive. It’s that magical time right after you’re out of high school. She was the top swimmer and dive champion in school. Now it’s a year later and she lives in a little town in Indiana and the place is dying, she’s working in a grocery store and drinking and drugging too much and she’s showing off in front of this guy who likes her, and gets involved in a big sex thing with two guys drunk one night at a quarry. She gets taped doing it on somebody’s phone and in a small town, her reputation is ruined and on a drunken whim, she joins the Marines, which is ridiculous. The ironic thing is that along the way she starts learning these values she doesn’t expect. They’re just values like you take your brother, they take care of you. It’s not like she’s a gung-ho Marine. She starts to sober up and then she gets into the Linus Program because she’s smart where they teach these women to speak Arabic. When they’re in combat situations, women in the Muslim world were not comfortable talking to men soldiers but they’d talk to the women soldiers so these women learned to speak the language and would ask if there were arms or snipers in the house. A tragedy happens and when she comes back to the town where she was a disaster, she rebuilds her life and finds through this tragedy a greater value in herself. It’s ‘Coming Home,’ ‘Best Years of our Lives,’ it’s part of that trilogy. It’s a phenomenal story and a slam-dunk Oscar for her.
And no, you’re not reading it wrong, Woods is comparing his film to “The Best Years Of Our Lives” and “Coming Home.” But hey, you gotta have some ambition right? Anyway, we’re curious about this one. Stewart is a good actress and the “Twilight” series really isn’t indicative of her talents. But if the success of those films allows her to continue pursuing more interesting projects like this, more power to her.