Oscar-winner Barbra Streisand and iconic activist Larry Kramer would be an incredible duo to have dinner with, but the two apparently don’t work with one another very well when it comes to moviemaking. The pair has semi-officially failed to bring The Normal Heart — Kramer’s 1985 play about anger and the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, currently on Broadway — to the big screen. Streisand first purchased the film rights to the play in 1985, intending to direct the film and take the part of Dr. Emma Brookner, but now she says Kramer was unwilling to make the script more cinematic. “Larry only wanted to use his screenplay,” she told Entertainment Weekly today, for some reason. “I couldn’t have my hands tied artistically.” Kramer counters: “Streisand rewrote the script to make her character the star, marginalizing the gay characters who are at the center of the play.” Kramer cedes Streisand is still generally cool in his book: “She’s a mighty force, and she has done a good deal for the gay world. She just wasn’t going to make this movie right.” The actress said she’s willing to play Brookner in Ryan Murphy’s alleged adaptation starring Mark Ruffalo, but not that happily. “If I could direct it today, I would,” she said. Upsetting that the two creative forces couldn’t make this movie happen, sure, but stubborn passion is also partly what people love about both of them. Artists. [Inside Movies/EW]
