Wanted: actor to play Keith Moon. Must have amazing eyes!
A biopic of The Who drummer Keith Moon has been in the works since 2013. Back then, the project was supposed to be the first collaboration by Exclusive Media and Da Vinci Media Ventures.
Who frontman Roger Daltrey has now confirmed that the stalled project is back on and he has a very specific casting requirement for the actor who will play Moon: they have to have "extraordinary eyes".
"I've got to find a Keith Moon," Daltrey told Matt Everitt in a BBC Radio 6 Music interview. "It's going to be very, very dependent on the actor and the actor's eyes. Because you've got to cast it completely from the eyes because Moon had extraordinary eyes."
Everitt suggested it might be a tough ask, finding an actor to play a musician with such charisma, causing Daltrey to quickly correct the presenter.
"What makes you think Keith was a f**king musician?" he said, laughing. "He would have said, 'How dare you my boy! A musician. I'm a f**king drummer!' They didn't really know Keith. I don't know whether anybody outside the band really got to know him like we did. He was a strange bunch of people."
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Despite such a long gestation period for the project, it's a surprise to learn that there's still not a completed script to work from.
"We've got to find the right screenplay," Daltrey added. "At the moment we have got a writer in place, I won't mention his name. [He's since confirmed it to be Jeff Pope, who wrote Philomena with Steve Coogan] But he's a very good writer and he hopes to be starting it towards the end of this year. Hopefully we'll be in production next year."
Daltrey says the "echoes of Moon" have carried throughout The Who's music since the drummer's death in 1978 and claims a lack of touring was one of the reasons for his death.
"It didn't help Moon's condition, that's for sure. Because drummers are like singers – singers need to sing; you stop singing you lose your voice, simple as that. It's only a muscle. If you stop exercising it, it'll go. And it was the same for drummers.
"All that physical energy that it took. In those days we use to do two-and-a-half, three-hour shows. What was Moon expected to do with that energy if he wasn't thrashing it out on a drum kit? And of course he took to all these pills and booze and all that stuff and it was a one-way journey for him then. He did try and get himself back together but that is another story that I'll tell when I make my Keith Moon film."
Daltrey also opened up about his own experiences as a movie star and in particular the fame that the film Tommy brought.
"All kinds of fame and the ramifications of fame came down on me that didn't exist prior to that. Even though we were an enormous band – we were probably the biggest band in the world at that time. All of a sudden I'm being recognised by everybody and life became hell," Roger added.
"And I didn't know how to deal with it. I was like a fish out of water and I did my best but I decided I didn't like it much. I really didn't, believe it or not. I still find the red carpet stuff very uncomfortable. Don't know why, always have. I'm quite shy really – it's like putting on a front and saying, 'Get a grip'.
"When you're in the band and you know the music you do and you're comfortable in that arena. That's what you do. All the other arenas, that's what film stars do. And I didn't want to be that kind of film star. I just wanted to be me, really."
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