Casting the Movie

Seeing Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover of September's Harper's Bazaar reminded me of a casting I'd like to call. How about SJP in a bio of Diana Vreeland?

SJP, like DV, is not a classically beautiful woman, but her joie de vivre spills over on that cover. In interviews and articles she seems quite grounded yet full of fun and energy. Maybe the last thing you could call Diana Vreeland was grounded, but SJP is an actress. I'm sure she could act the part of over-the-top DV as well as the sensitive DV who comes through in Lisa Immordino Vreeland's "The Eye Has to Travel".

Can't you just see SJP, as the society Mrs. Vreeland, purposely striding off to her editor's job at Harper's Bazaar? Can you see her on a photo shoot, hairpins and straight pins flying and finally taking over for a flu-stricken model somewhere in the desert?

How about SJP with her very handsome husband Reed (casting TK), out on the town or painting the country house in Brewster as many times as it took to get the right shade of red?

I'm thinking Ryan Gosling...

Do you feel a '70s revival? Imagine the scenes at Studio 54 with DV and her pals Andy Warhol, Halston and Liza Minelli? What drama in the episode where she is fired from Vogue? The finale could be her grand entrance at one of the glorious, extravagant exhibitions she assembled for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And the sets! Her red living room alone is a scene stealer.

Wait a minute... Someone has already had this idea. Peter Lindbergh photographed SJP as DV for the March 2009 issue of Harper's Bazaar.* That was before "The Eye Has to Travel", book or film, and before the whole world realized Diana Vreeland was such an amazing life-force. Don't you think the time is right to put all the pieces together?

* I find it interesting that Harper's Bazaar ran this great feature. It was they who passed over Diana Vreeland for the magazine's editorship, thus losing her AND Richard Avedon to Vogue.