Douglas, Damon Illuminate HBO's 'Candelabra'
Before you see any of Behind the Candelabra — when you just consider the concept of the TV movie and its casting — this new HBO Films production raises all sorts of questions: How much will be based on verifiable fact, and how much will be fictionalized? On an anything-goes premium-cable network such as HBO, how graphic will the sex scenes be?
And the most important questions involve the drama's two leading men, playing an ultra-flamboyant piano player and the wide-eyed young man who becomes his behind-the-scenes companion for five years. Michael Douglas? Matt Damon?
Let's dispense with the biggest curiosity factor — the casting — right away. Behind the Candelabra structures its story quite cleverly by starting with Damon as shaggy-haired Scott Thorson, a farm boy of sorts who works as a dog trainer for Hollywood films, lives with protective older foster parents, and is first shown, in 1977, shyly allowing himself to be approached at a bar by another man.
“ It's like 'Elvis and Me,' that TV movie about Elvis and Priscilla Presley — except that in this case, it's boy meets boy, boy gets boy, boy loses boy.