Jason Reitman brings his “Live Read” series to the Toronto International Film Festival with a table read of Alan Ball’s screenplay for “American Beauty,” the Oscar-winner that premiered at TIFF in 1999. The director of “Thank You for Smoking” and “Up in the Air” will announce the cast of the table read via his Twitter account over the next few days leading to the September 6 event. So far, Reitman has cast Adam Driver from “Girls” as Ricky Fitts (played by Wes Bentley in the film) and Sarah Gadon, from “Cosmopolis,” as Angela (Mena Suvari’s character). He announced that Mae Whitman will play Thora Birch’s character and actor Nick Kroll from “Community,” will read Peter Gallagher’s part. For Lester Burnham, the lead role originally played by Kevin Spacey, Reitman just added Bryan Cranston. Christina Hendricks is set to play his wife (originally played by Annette Bening), and Woody Harrelson will read the part of his neighbor, Col. Frank Fitts.
Reitman began his popular “Live Read” program with LACMA in October 2011. The series always sells out. So far the actors reading classic film scripts have included “The Apartment” (Steve Carell and Natalie Portman), “The Princess Bride” (Paul Rudd), “Shampoo” (Bradley Cooper and Kate Hudson), “The Big Lebowski” (Seth Rogen), and “Reservoir Dogs,” read by an all-African American cast with Terrence Howard and Laurence Fishburne. The series will continue with LACMA starting in October of this year.
Tickets for the table read, held at the Ryerson Theatre, are available here.
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