Posted By:
DMcDAfter reading The Celebrant I thought it would make a terrific movie, done up as a period piece like Eight Men Out. Big question was who do you get to play Christy Mathewson? Matty was something of a Greek God in the looks department so you'd need an actor with the same Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy appeal. A Rock Hudson type (no queer jokes, please) with a strong, polite Jimmy Stewart character. I don't know which modern actor that would be. Tom Hanks? Too big and famous. Tom Hanks plays Tom Hanks. Leonardo DiCaprio? Too big of a dickhead. Ben Affleck? Maybe, but is he up to the job as an actor? Keanu Reeves? Yea, right. Barry Pepper was interesting in Saving Ryan's Privates and he was near-perfect as Roger Maris (however if you listen carefully in *61 he threw in a few oots and aboots ; he's a frigging Canadian, you know) but he don't look nothing like Matty. How about Tobey Maguire? He's got the haircut, anyway.
Years back Charles Durning did a bang-up one-man dramatization of the life and times of Casey Stengel. You might think this would have been like getting Don Knotts to play Hamlet but Durning as Stengel was brilliant! By that logic, you can only imagine the possibilities for Matty. Denzel Washington? Helen Mirren?
For John McGraw: a no-brainer, James Cagney, even if you have to dig him up. And what say when they film The Max Weder Story Tim Robbins gets the call? 
