The Right Stuff for The Bonfire of the Vanities
10/25/2012
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Who should have been cast in the notoriously bad 1990 movie version of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities? These suggestions all assume it's 1990, although pop culture history since then is assumed:

Sherman McCoy (played by Tom Hanks): William Hurt or Steve Martin (Hanks is too likable, lacks WASP hauteur)

Self-hating English tabloid journalist Peter Fallow (played by Bruce Willis; character based on Anthony Haden-Guest): Christopher Guest (half-brother of Haden-Guest), Richard E. Grant, or Hugh Grant

Judge Myron "Jewish Warrior" Kovitsky (played by Morgan Freeman in the movie; based on Judge Burton B. Roberts): Alan Arkin

Kramer the hapless Assistant DA (played by Saul Rubinek): Jason Alexander

Rev. Bacon (John Hancock; based on Al Sharpton): Eddie Murphy

Killian (Kevin Dunn; based on streetwise NYC criminal attorney Eddie Hayes): Mickey Rourke, Alec Baldwin, or Dennis Leary

Detectives (Barton Heyman and Norton Parker): Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth

Elderly Albert Vogel (not in movie; based on hustling radical lawyer William Kunstler): Rodney Dangerfield

District Attorney Abe Weiss (F. Murray Abraham): Dustin Hoffman, Michael Lerner (studio mogul in Barton Fink)

Tall, rawboned, explosively crazy prisoner (not in movie; based presumably on Hunter S. Thompson): Michael Richard

The Mayor (not in movie; based on Ed Koch): Mayor Ed Koch

McCoy's wife and girlfriend (Kim Cattrall and Melanie Griffith): I don't know, but not Kim Cattrall and/or Melanie Griffith

And you can do the same exercise for a hypothetical 2013 remake.

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