Man Bites Dog in Hollywood

Variety reports:

Producer Robert Moresco ("Million Dollar Baby," "Crash") has partnered with Artist Relations Group to produce a biopic about Fidel Castro's exiled daughter, Alina Fernandez. Castro recently ceded power to his brother Raul after almost 50 years in power.

Story, set in 1958, begins after Castro seized control of Cuba, with Fernandez as a young girl naive to the fact that the bearded cigar smoker who secretly visits her mother and the man she sees on TV are one and the same.

Fernandez, who fled Cuba disguised as a Spanish tourist in 1993, published her life story, "Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba," will consult on the pic. Plot will also interweave other historical perspectives. (Ed. note: Variety apparently isn't a stickler for having highly lyric prose.)

Hollywood's long, rancid love affair with Castro is no secret. Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg and Robert Redford have previously lined up to be ravished by Cuba's prison warden-in-chief. (A while ago, I wrote a piece about Errol Flynn's wacky docudrama, Cuban Rebel Girls, made with Castro's OK.) That a producer of two Oscar-winning movies is willing to portray an unflattering side of "the bearded cigar smoker," even as a subplot, is astonishing.

One possible caveat: That bit about "other historical perspectives." This could be Hollywood-speak for "American aggression," with a nod to the botched Bay of Pigs invasion. And the timing of the announcement - months after Castro stepped aside - is worth noting. Still, the movie will be a worthwhile endeavor if one of Ms Fernandez's childhood memories survives the final cut: According to her Wikipedia entry, "[She] remembers Mickey Mouse being replaced on the television with executions ordered by Fidel Castro."