The year was 2020, early 2020: Robert Pattinson was scheduled to wrap his starring role as the Caped Crusader onThe Batmanwith plenty of time by that summer to jump into principal photography on a much smaller budget from the French production company Wild Bunchwith A24 securing US distribution. The film,Stars at Noon, based on Denis Johnson’s 1986 novel of almost the same name,The Stars at Noon(the film dropped the “the”), was to follow an American journalist stranded in Nicaragua during the Revolution of 1984 who, after falling in love with a mysterious Englishman she hoped could be her ticket out of the country, discovers that he is even hotter water than her.
Stars at Noonwas poised to reunite Pattinson with acclaimed French director Claire Denis (not to be confused with Denis Johnson, the author of the source novel) after their 2018 collaboration on another transatlantic Wild Bunch/A24 venture,High Life; the film where Robert Pattinson plays a single dad in space. Pattinson was set to star as the mysterious Englishman (which incidentally could have been his character’s name inTenet) alongside Margaret Qualley as the stranded American journalist.
In early 2020, Qualley was still on the heels of her standout performance as “Pussycat,” the Manson Family hippie hitchhiker in Quentin Tarantino’sOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood. Claire Denis was blown away when she watched the film at its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21st, 2019, deciding that very night that the young actress was perfectly suited to star opposite Pattinson in her romantic thriller,Stars at Noon.
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Fast-forward three years later: Cannes Film Festival. May of this year. Denis premieredStars at Noonto mostly positive reviews from some critics and plenty of praise for Qualley in the lead role opposite… some other guy that is definitely not Robert Pattinson.
So, why isn’t Pattinson in the movie? The answer to this question might sound a little familiar: due to Covid-19. The pandemic causedproduction onThe Batmanto suspendin mid-March of 2020, picking back up in early September of that year only to shut down for another couple of weeks after Pattinson tested positive for the virus. Amidst the chaos ofThe Batmanproduction postponements and subsequent reshoots, Pattinson was left with no other choice than fulfill his contractual obligations to Warner Bros. and step down from his leading role in Claire Denis’Stars at Noon.
Taron Egerton Was Once Attached to Stars at Noon, Replacing Robert Pattinson
Summer of 2021: Wild Bunch announces thatPattinson’s role had been recastto none other than the whip-smart Welsh star ofKingsman: The Secret Service, theRocketmanhimself, Taron Egerton. For a mysterious Englishman, Denis could have done worse.
November 2021: Egerton dropped out of the film, citing personal reasons. So, Denis didn’t get Pattinson. And she didn’t get Egerton. Who, then, did she find to play the mysterious Englishman for her film?
Joe Alwyn Lands the Role
Perhaps it was fate that let Batman and Rocketman slip through the French filmmaker’s fingers because, like Qualley inOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood, Denis remembered being blown away by another breakout performance she saw a few years prior inAng Lee’s 2016 film,Billy Lynn’s Halftime Walk. It was the titular role of Billy. And it was played to greater critical acclaim than the film itself by then-newcomer English actor Joe Alwyn.
Related:Taron Egerton Reveals Why He Turned Down Han Solo Role in Solo: A Star Wars Story
December of 2021: Principal photography finally began onStars at Noonwith its two talented up-and-coming co-stars, Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn, supported by a cast that includes John C. Reily, Benny Safdie, and “Fanboy” fromTop Gun: Maverick, Danny Ramirez. But the leading male role wasn’t the only thing that went through a few changes since the film’s conception in the late 2010s.
While Denis Johnson’s source novel is set during the 1984 Nicaraguan Revolution, Claire Denis decided in pre-production that it would be best to move the setting up to the current day, pandemic and all. However, some critics have noted the unfortunate lack of actual difference this makes given theongoing political turmoilin Nicaragua, and even Denis herself has noted that the production decision to shoot the film in Panama rather than Nicaragua was due to the re-election of Nicaraguan President Ortega, an election which many world leaders consider fraudulent.
When asked about the time period and location switches at the 2022 Cannes Press Conference, Denis said:
“… as we were changing to Panama… to recreate the Sandinista Civil War in Panama seemed so ridiculous… What is in the novel, the importance is the meeting of [Qualley and Alwyn’s] characters. And the civil war is like the background of their meeting as if they were in an unkind or dangerous world, together, finding an exit… and they fall in love. I think this was the most important, beautiful thing in the book, is the way they fall in love, the way they speak to each other as if they needed that kind of humor to shield their feelings.”
The kind of humor the filmmaker is referring to is the signature crude humor from the author of the source novel.
Denis Johnson Is an Author Whose Work Has Garnered Few Screen Adaptations
In the same press conference, Claire Denis admitted that what she saw in Johnson’s writing was, “… my own fears, my own humiliations, my own hopes, my own despair. And I thought his dialogue was expressing that in such a crude and also delicate way,” adding that she was initially, “afraid” to tackle an adaptation of his work since Johnson is something of a cult classic author. His prose is sparse like Hemingway and, conversely, filled with drunken rambling like Kerouac and sprinkled with crude quips that read likeKevin Smith dialogue. Take this line from Denis Johnson’s seminal work, the 1992 cult favorite,Jesus Son:
“[The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk - that is, me - standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face.
‘What seems to be the trouble?’ he asked.”
Claire Denis is one of the few film directors up to the challenge of translating Johnson’s unique prose to the big screen, and A24 has bet on her success as the company will be releasingStars at Noontheatrically in the United States on October 14th, 2022.
