Fun guys at Venice

We’re approaching the tail end of the Venice Film Festival, which wraps up this weekend, but first there was a premiere for Julian Schnabel’s new film, In the Hand of Dante, which stars Oscar Isaac and Jason Momoa, as well as Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, John Malkovich, Louis Cancelmi, Sabrina Impacciatore, Al Pacino, Emmy Nominee™ Martin Scorsese, and Benjamin Clementine. 

Many of those people, like Gadot, Pacino, and Scorsese, did not come out for the premiere. But Jason Momoa and Oscar Isaac did!

Space daddy Oscar showed up in a burgundy suit and salt and pepper beard. It’s a little bit 70s with the flared pants and open collar. I’m not mad at it.

Jason Momoa, meanwhile, turned up in his version of minimal in a pink suit with matching Birksenstocks and perfect waves.

Momoa and Isaac look like they were having a lot of fun, which is nice, and I hope for their sakes was real, because I have been around Julian Schnabel and at no time would I describe my experience as “fun” (“deeply tedious” comes to mind). But the lads were ladding last night in Venice.

In the Hand of Dante is an adaptation of Nick Tosches’ 2002 book of the same name. It tells parallel stories of Dante Alighieri in the fourteenth century and a fictionalized version of Nick Tosches in the “present” of the early 2000s. In the movie, Isaac plays both Dante and Tosches. In the Hand of Dante is a rare book I did not finish because Tosches extensively quotes his own work in it, which is just padding the runtime, my dude. Hopefully, Schnabel was able to make something more interesting from the concept for the film. 

But what I really wonder about this film is the Johnny Depp of it all. Back in the 2000s, Depp optioned Tosches’ book through his production shingle, Infinitum Nihil. He and Schnable were collaborating on an adaptation intended to star Depp in the early 2010s. But then they had some kind of falling out, as Depp ghosted Schnabel for reasons unknown. Depp’s production company is still listed as a stakeholder in Dante, but Depp is not listed among the (many) producers, so at some point he did personally exit the project. Also, Schnabel’s son, Vito, dated Amber Heard after her divorce from Depp.

All this got me thinking about those allegations about Jason Momoa acting badly—maybe even harassingly—toward Amber Heard during the production of Aquaman 2. Nothing was ever substantiated, and so nothing ever stuck to Jason Momoa, who largely maintains his reputation as one of Hollywood’s fun guys. But it is a quirk of fate, isn’t it, that he ended up in a movie once intended for Johnny Depp. Just little things to think about.