Nicole Kidman acquired the rights to Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang almost 3 years ago. Click here for my coverage of the story and my thoughts on the book. Briefly, The Family Fang is about Caleb and Camille Fang, renowned performance artists, who use their children in controversial public stunts (one of them involved the father prostituting his kids in a mall), secretly videotaping the public’s reaction, and then screening the footage at museums and galleries like it’s creative genius. Needless to say, the children are f-cked up as a result of their parents’ imagination and selfish pursuit of… art.
It’s meta, especially considering what’s on television now. And on social media too. Is it also an indictment of the kind of modern parenting that’s shaping pop culture right now? Caleb Fang exploited his child in a shopping mall, fictionally. What would you call a 6 year old playing his guitar, hoping for record deal, on YouTube, in real life?
I really, really enjoyed this book. And I was very much looking forward to seeing Granny Freeze play the mother, Camille Fang.
Turns out she’s not playing the mother. She’s playing Annie, the daughter, and Jason Bateman will be Buster, the son. Christopher Walken has been cast as Caleb Fang, the family patriarch. Wouldn’t you have believed Granny Freeze and Walken as a married couple? As that particular married couple? But OF COURSE SHE COULDN’T. Because Nicole Kidman wants to be 35 forever. OK.
Here they all are on set yesterday in New York.
