Wishin' and a hoping this doesn't happen...

Wherever she is Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien is either having a great laugh or big cry. News broke last week that Mary and her life would be portrayed in an epic film penned by Michael Cunningham for Nicole Kidman. Oh why oh why oh why? Leave her alone. Don't pick at corpses as she has only been dead for nine years. In case you don't know who I am talking about Mary O'Brien was also known as Dusty Springfield. Kidman has been hinting about playing Springfield for more than a year. She told the Advocate in 2006 that Dusty was the gay icon she most wanted to bring to life. Cunningham, who helped Kidman get her Oscar for The Hours, interviewed Kidman last year in Interview magazine and has said that they would deal with all the issues that revolved around Dusty. Her perfectionism, her talent and her bisexuality.

Note to you idiots, Kidman and Cunningham, Dusty was a lesbian. But Dusty, in her lifetime couldn't talk about being a lesbian and had to talk in vague terms about being bisexual. She never married, kept cats and liked her privacy. When that makeup came on and she hit the stage or studio you didn't get in her way. With a cigarette in her hand and the words to the song in front of her you didn't mess with her. She was in charge and in the 1960's that was almost unheard of for a woman.

Very few albums stand out. Yes there was Revolver, Born to Run, Blood on the Tracks and there was Dusty in Memphis. This record was legendary in that it used the best musicians and had a distinct sound. It was a classic and the only one from a woman recorded in the 60's. Springfield, being a diva, had a hard time getting her voice heard the way she felt it should be. Dusty also was playing in the big boys club even though she was still a shy convent girl. She didn't feel she was attractive, hated having her picture taken and often used her insecurity as if it were a weapon. Now tell me how Nicole Kidman could ever play her? Kidman the actress is not good enough to portray Dusty. Dusty was too complex. Dusty had that desire to create good music and perform it. You have to understand being a musician to get Dusty. It’s not about her make up or her isolation or even the cancer that killed her. It is about creating and performing and Kidman is incapable of this.

Kidman has said in interviews that she doesn't understand her husband; doesn't get what he does. Dusty should be played by a lesser known actress or a complete unknown. Why? Because the audience has to believe that the woman in front of them is Dusty. In Kidman's case it is Nicole Kidman playing Dusty Springfield and that takes away from the importance that Dusty had in music. How many of you knew that much about Virginia Woolf, except she killed herself and A Room of One’s Own? But stick a rubber nose on Kidman and play up her sad personal life in the tabloids and gosh darn she got an Oscar. Too many of us remember Dusty. Another thing Kidman would need to be careful of is alienating her gay audience. You get a bunch of gay men and lesbians pissed at you for taking their idol apart and your career could be over. Don't laugh at that, its true.

Dusty is just too big for Kidman. It’s sad that she wants to do this role but Kidman can't do it. She doesn't have that range. More importantly Dusty is too important a figure in music to be prostituted by Kidman. Look at what she did to Diane Arbus. It would be tragic to lose this story to that box office poison. Hollywood - find someone else please.