The New York Post’s “Page

The New York Post‘s “Page Six” column says “the race is on” to see who’ll be the first to make a biopic of LSD guru Timothy Leary — Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Appian Way production company, which has been half-heartedly stirring this pot for at least a couple of years, or Fountain director Darren Aronofsky , who didn’t mention any Leary project to me when we last spoke (at the Golden Globes awards) but whatever. Aronofsky may or may not be in a “race” mode but the DiCaprio team is mostly slumbering, I’ve been told. Two years on the case and there’s not even a screenplay written…what does that tell you? And here’s a list of current Appian Way projects with no mention of Tim. A source with a significant perspective on the action said this morning that the DiCaprio/Appian Way/Leary project has been “on hold” for some time, in part due to an effort to slap together a decent screenplay of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, which has taken the better part of two years. There’s “not a lot of focus” at Appian Way, he said. “Leo is all over the map…he wants to work with Marty on this and that…[Appian Way] doesn’t exactly have a center-of-gravity thing going on.” I had a 90-second chat with DiCaprio about the Leary project at the ’05 Santa Barbara Film Festival, and about 25 or 30 seconds into it I mentioned a great penetrating book about ’60s psychaedelia called “Storming Heaven,” written by Jay Stevens, my point being that anyone writing a screenplay about Leary should definitely read it as part of their research. (I don’t remember if Leo acknowledged having read it…he may have.) I also asked Milos Forman about his reported interest in directing a Leary biopic during the April ’04 San Francisco Film Festival, and he said “nobody knows what [this movie] would be, or how to come at it…you can’t just make a movie about [Leary's] life…you have to figure a way in.”

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