Tilda Swinton is remaking Auntie Mame, darling!
Bil Browning www.facebook.com
Patrick Dennis, the author of the original book, was bisexual and married to a woman, but well known in the Greenwich Village gay scene.
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LGBTQ Nation
Is a remake of the gay camp classic Auntie Mame in the works? According to Bridesmaids writer Annie Mumulo it is – and Tilda Swinton is behind it! In an interview with Vanity Fair the scribe let is slip that she’s working on a new screenplay based off Patrick Dennis’ 1955 book Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade.

While Rosalind Russell will always be Auntie Mame to most gay men thanks to the 1958 film, Mumolo says Swinton is ready to take on the part. (No one likes to talk about Mame, the musical version starring Bea Arthur and Lucille Ball. Because why drag up bad memories, right?)

“She asked me, ‘Have you read Auntie Mame?’” Mumolo told the magazine. “I said, ‘No, I haven’t read the book but I’ve seen the other version of it made into a film version in the 50s.’ She said, ‘Would you take a look at it? I want to see if you are interested in writing a modern-day adaptation.’ I said yes, because you say yes to Tilda Swinton when she asks if you want to do something.

“I read the book and it was one of the most fun reads I’ve ever had. It’s totally different from what I had seen in the movie versions,” Mumolo says. “We had meetings and then, as I got a little overwhelmed with a few other work things, I brought on a co-writer to work together on this, because it’s a huge job and an adaptation.”

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No word yet on a release date or any actors firmly attached to the project, so we’ll leave you with this bit of Mame-related trivia.

Patrick Dennis was a pen name for Edward Everett Tanner III. He based the character off his father’s sister, but the entire story, written like a memoir, is fiction.

“I write in the first person, but it is all fictional. The public assumes that what seems fictional is fact; so the way for me to be inventive is to seem factual but be fictional,” he told Life magazine back in 1962.

After his books fell out of popularity, Tanner became a butler for Roy Kroc, the CEO of McDonalds. He never revealed his former life as the first author to have three books on the New York Times bestseller list and the Kroc family didn’t find out he was famous until after he had died.

He was bisexual and married to a woman, but well known in the Greenwich Village gay scene.

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