Wednesday
10Jun2009
Diane Lane to Star in Secretariat Movie
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 10:36PM
I guess all you can hope for is that you're not outshined by the horse: Diane Lane will star in one of those Based on Real Events movies when writer-director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers, the Braveheart screenplay) brings the story of Secretariat to theaters.

Secretariat won the Triple Crown of horse racing in 1973, and Lane will play his owner, Penny Chenery. No word yet on whether Hilary Swank will star as the Secretariat. The standard for this kind of movie is Gary Ross' pristine Seabiscuit, but this one has a slightly different perspective.
To begin with, the story is about the owner, Chenery, who knew very little about the racing game when she took over her father's horse farm and was pressured to sell Secretariat when the horse began to show promise.
Wallace is directing the film, and Mike Rich wrote the script. Wallace has been (or had been) working on the script for Atlas Shrugged, so, you know, counting grains of sand on the beach would seem like a much easier task after that.

Colin Boyd |
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Reader Comments (2)
I hope the perspective will highlight Secretariat. I hope Wallace and Rich watch "Ruffian" written by Jim Burstein & Garret K. Schiff, directed by Yves Simoneau, it was a visual and emotional work of art done magnificiently in her memory. Seabiscuit wasn't really about the horse, it was about his owner and jockey's lives.
Same here. 'Seabiscuit' was best summed up both by the monologue Toby Maguire said at the very end, about the horse (or more specifically the experience of working with the horse) fixing the jockey, trainer, and owner, and the group of them fixing each other as well; and the line the trainer said about not throwing a whole life away just 'cause it got banged up a bit'. Ultimately I loved how the movie showcased the story of this horse bringing these people together for such an incredible and life-changing experience parallel to the story of Seabiscuit himself. I wish 'Ruffian' had been a major motion picture as opposed to a made for TV movie, but it was beautiful. Both of these movies did a great job of showcasing the most extraordinary aspects of the respective stories: Ruffian's unprecedented popularity and success, and the amazing back stories that brought Seabiscuit's owners, jockey, and trainer together to give that horse the opportunity to become a hero. 'Secretariat' filmmakers need to focus on the thing that made that horse's tale so worthy of being told on the silver screen, not worry about making the actress look good. Because seriously, while Penny Chenery is a great woman who did right by Secretariat, no one is going to the theater to see a movie about her, they want to see a movie about her horse. I for one will be extremely disappointed if 'Secretariat' fails to give him his due.