Josh Hartnett as Chet Baker?
While being recently interviewed about his role in Resurecting the Champ, actor Josh Hartnett stated his desire to play Chet Baker in a biopic of the trumpet player and singer. After a little research, this is something that seems to have been in the works for the last year or so, with Canadian production company Kingsborough Pictures at the helm of what is presently titled The Prince of Cool. Here are some of Hartnett's quotes regarding playing Chet Baker and the film itself.
"There's a lot of people interested in making the film, but we haven't signed a director, haven't finished the script," he says of The Prince of Cool, his dream Chet Baker project. "It'll get made. Just a question of time."
"I'd heard his music, you know, 'My Funny Valentine.' But his story got my interest ..... His career, what he went through, is so incredible and so dark that to tell his story honestly would blow people's minds, I think."
"He was severely beaten, which wrecked his teeth and lips and his embouchure," the lip- and facial-muscle formation required to play a wind instrument, Harnett marvels. And when the end came, it was sudden and unexpected, unusual in such tales. Baker fell out of a window. "It is wild to think of how much he squeezed into in his life," Hartnett says.
Director-turned-author Bruce Beresford even wrote a book and referred specifically to this project in the title of the book: Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants To Do This. Let's all hope for the best!