Maxance Vincent
According to Variety, Kristen Stewart is set to play Susan Sontag in a meta film directed by Kirsten Johnson. Titled Sontag, the movie will start filming at the Berlin International Film Festival, where Stewart will be the jury president. This will mark Johnson’s first fiction film, after directing acclaimed documentaries such as Cameraperson and Dick Johnson is Dead.
In a statement, producer Gabrielle Tana said, “We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the project and do documentary footage of Kristen as the head of the jury and talking to her about how she’s going to become Sontag.
It will be a drama, but with a documentary aspect to it. Kirsten has a wonderful approach to storytelling, and this is reflective of that, so she will use documentary in it.”
The approach seems to be similar from Dick Johnson is Dead, with dramatized sequences alternating between documentary scenes. However, the movie will not be an actual documentary and instead dramatize Sontag’s life through a documentary lens. No release date or other cast members have currently been announced.
Source: Variety
Argh, I really hope that’s a working title and not what they settled on.
Why are titles of biopics so lazy most of the time? Here you have this famous essayist and political activist that you’re making a movie about; give it an interesting title! How much more eye-catching and memorable would this be if it were called Styles of Radical Will or The Dark Lady or Sanity is a Cozy Lie?
“Nah, let’s just call it Sontag. Don’t want to confuse Academy voters!”
My hunch is that someone along the line has decided that with biopics, just using the name almost makes it like an IP