Fly me to the moon! Ryan Gosling is starring as Neil Armstrong in First Man

I’ve been going gaga over La La Land, wishing I could share the love here. My favorite movie of the year, I’ve seen La La Land three times and own the soundtrack. That being said, I’ve been a mega Ryan Gosling fan ever since my husband worked with him on the movie Drive. I met Ryan at the wrap party and he couldn’t have been sweeter. Raved how my husband—an assistant director—was the one who should be in front of the camera. Sweet, right? My husband is both good-looking and funny—he and Ryan cracked each other up a lot on set—but Ryan didn’t have to say that. Plus I’m old but not blind and he’s just my kind of gorgeous. Long and lean, he knows how to wear clothes and has the sharp featured face I’ve gone for since the 5th grade. So there you have it, the crush behind the admiration of his acting chops.

Look! They have similar noses and mouths!

Good news for me! Ryan Gosling and La La Land director Damien Chazelle are reteaming. Gosling is going to play astronaut Neil Armstrong in a biopic based on James Hansen’ s book First Man: The Life Of Neil Armstrong. 

Apparently Damien Chazelle has been attached to the project since he broke out last year with Whiplash and Gosling was his top choice to play the first man to walk on the surface of the moon. At the time Gosling was unavailable due to Blade Runner 2049—another book2movie starring Gosling that I’m happily awaiting—but now shooting of that has been taken care of, and the sky, as they say, is the limit. Spotlight co-writer Josh Singer wrote the adaptation.

About the book

“In a riveting narrative filled with revelations, Hansen vividly recreates Armstrong’s career in flying, from his seventy-eight combat missions as a naval aviator flying over North Korea to his formative transatmospheric flights in the rocket-powered X-15 to his piloting Gemini VIII to the first-ever docking in space. These milestones made it seem, as Armstrong’s mother Viola memorably put it, “as if from the very moment he was born—farther back still—that our son was somehow destined for the Apollo 11 mission.”

For a pilot who cared more about flying to the Moon than he did about walking on it, Hansen asserts, Armstrong’s storied vocation exacted a dear personal toll, paid in kind by his wife and children. For the forty-five years since the Moon landing, rumors have swirled around Armstrong concerning his dreams of space travel, his religious beliefs, and his private life.

In a penetrating exploration of American hero worship, Hansen addresses the complex legacy of the First Man, as an astronaut and as an individual. In First Man, the personal, technological, epic, and iconic blend to form the portrait of a great but reluctant hero who will forever be known as history’s most famous space traveler.

Interesting character, yes? I’m not a big reader of biographies but I might have to read this one. Shooting starts sometime this year, I imagine they’re gearing up for a release sometime in 2018. Any other Gosling fans pumped up about this one?