Why I'm not at the movies all that much

The kind of movies I want don't overlap often enough with the kinds of movies Hollywood cranks out.

The other day I was discussing the relative charms of the recently single Reese Witherspoon with some colleagues the other day. I pointed out that I thought her best performance was in Election but I'd heard she kicked ass in Walk the Line and looked hottest in "Cruel Intentions" and, yes, Sweet Home Alabama.

In my defense, I was a captive audience for that last one, seeing as I was sitting four feet from a giant screen showing it on a plane that was several miles above the ocean. It was pleasant enough for an inflight movie, although I read most of a Richard Russo novel during that flight, too.

Anyway, it was posited that I was an idiot for having seen all of Sweet Home Alabama but none of Walk the Line. I pointed out that it's rare for a Hollywood biopic (which I always want to pronounce to rhyme with "myopic") to be about someone whose life I'm sufficiently interested enough to drop a tenner on.

When asked who I would want to see as the subect of a biopic my first answer was sufficiently dorky enough to bring the conversation to a screeching halt. Shortly thereafter, everyone returned to their computers.

Who was it? I'm not saying, but he's on the list below. I would see a movie about the lives of any of these people. It is not an exhaustive list by any means.

• Winston Churchill
• Klemens von Metternich
• Roald Dahl
• Billy Corgan
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel
• Howard Metzenbaum
• Margaret Thatcher
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Jimmy Carter
• Ned Ludd

As you can see, it's all the stuff of blockbuster summers. I'm no film exec, but can't you see Leo DiCaprio in a top hat, digging a tunnel under the Thames? Maybe Burt Reynolds opening Yellowstone. Or maybe Keira Knightley as a young Maggie ready to challenge unions and communists. I'm not sure who would play Metzenbaum, but I'm sure they could bring in Ed Harris to reprise the role of John Glenn from The Right Stuff, just as Glenn reprised his own role as astronaut long after his first orbit.

McConaughey would play an awesome Carter ("I get older; Anwar Sadat stays the saaaaame age.") Plus, the ladies would love to see him both in his navy uniform and his peanut-farming dunagarees. I should totally run Hollywood.