A Few Lookalike Suggestions for Casting This New Lance Armstrong Movie
Deadline reported today that Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot's J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk have obtained the rights to New York Times reporter Juliet Macur's book proposal for Cycle Of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong. Of course, #LanceArmstrongMovieTitles is already going strong on Twitter. But with Armstrong's Oprah confession dominating headlines this week and returning for part two tonight — and with Macur's reporting delving into every detail of his unfolding drama — we've never been more familiar with the characters of this biopic-to-be. Plus, it's pretty amazing how much some of Hollywood's leading men look like the major players in the scandal. So who should be in the movie? Let's play casting director:
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Lance Armstrong
For the lead role, Abrams and Co. are going to want an actor who can capture both the magnetism that made so many people such loyal followers and the sleaziness that contributed to his downfall. How about Matthew McConaughey? The former rom-com star has had a career revival playing weird supporting characters in weird movies of late. And he's due for a big, leading-role Oscar push. Too bad they're running buddies, because the resemblance is kind of uncanny:
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You know who's not a bad — and pretty plausible — backup, though? Newly minted Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper, who showed in Silver Linings Playbook that he can exercise and act at the time, while playing a jerk pretty well, too:
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Floyd Landis
We're pretty sure that Landis, who went through his own doping scandal before filing a whistle-blower lawsuit on the United States Postal Service team, will play a foil to Armstrong's lead. And Jeremy Renner has Landis's terrier face:
Another choice — albeit a more unconventional one — is Parks and Recreation's goofball Chris Pratt. Stay with us. Pratt bulked up impressively for his role in Zero Dark Thirty as a SEAL Team 6 member, and he played a pro athlete in Moneyball. Perhaps this can be his chance to try out his dramatic chops:
Besty Andreu
We hope we'll get to see a dramatization of that phone call we heard about last night in which Armstrong said he told Andreu, "I called you crazy, I called you a bitch, but I never said you were fat." Andreu and her husband claimed they overheard Armstrong admit to using performance enhancers in a hospital room. The filmmakers will need a great leading lady with a touch of that character-actress thing for this one. Mary Louise Parker or Marissa Tomei would do just fine:
Travis Tygart
For the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO who has pursued Armstrong over the years — and been a big source to the source material — we see Mark Strong. Though Strong makes a great villain, as he did in Sherlock Holmes, he also proved in Zero Dark Thirty that he can fight the good and bad fight for his country, yelling along the way:
Another possibility? David Strathairn:
