From the Western Mail:
ALARM leader singer Mike Peters is to start discussions with Rhys Ifans in a bid to persuade the Welsh actor to play him in a new Hollywood film.
Peters confirmed yesterday he will have the script for the movie sent to Ifans’ agents ICM, in London, to open negotiations with the Notting Hill star.
Ruthin-born Ifans’s agents told the Western Mail he wants to see a script before making a decision on whether to take on the role.
The new movie tells the story of how Peters duped the music industry in 2004 after hiring teenyboppers The Wayriders to lip-synch a song to get The Alarm back in the Top 40.
The Wayriders released the Alarm single 45 RPM under the guise of The Poppyfields and the scam landed them a number 28 hit – the North Wales band’s first top 30 hit since 1989.
The song even managed to fool Radio 1 DJs Mark and Lard and Steve Lamacq as well as critics who raved about it.
The story made headlines around the world with Peters, from Rhyl, Denbighshire, interviewed on prime-time America’s CBS News with Dan Rather.
The tale caught the imagination of Shrek 2 producer John Williams, who persuaded scriptwriter Jim Cooper to get involved.
And by a bizarre coincidence Williams also contacted Rhyl-born director and lifelong friend of Peters, Sara Sugarman, about working on the film without realising the rock star and movie maker already knew each other.
Sugarman, who made Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Very Annie Mary, was in a band called The Fractures that supported Peters’s first act The Toilets. She quickly agreed to direct the new film, which Peters believes may end up being called 45RPM or The Poppyfields.
Peters, 46, is a huge fan of Ifans’s work and has wanted him to take on the role from the moment he was contacted by Williams.
The singer was bowled over by Ifans’s performance as a funeral director in the video for the Oasis track The Importance of Being Idle last year.
Peters, who has recently revealed he is battling against cancer, said, “I’ll definitely be sending Rhys the script. Sara and Jim Cooper are working on the second draft.
“We have all thought he (Ifans) would be brilliant because he is Welsh and he has that rock and roll look about him.
“He was incredible in the Oasis video last year.
“We’ll get it across to him as fast as we can. Sara thinks he would be fantastic in it.”
Publication::Publication:Western Mai
Author::Darren Devine
