Natalie Portman Writing Screenplays Now

From Vulture:

Not content to just star in a 'chicks empowered by having cavalier attitudes towards sex just like boys do' comedy, Natalie Portman has gone and written one of her own. Portman and a college friend are shopping around a script called BYO, short for Bring Your Own, about two twentysomethings who throw a party where all attendees have to bring a single dude. It's being described as a 'female-themed Superbad,' and Anne Hathaway is reportedly interested in co-starring with Portman, though no word yet on which of them will be obsessed with drawing penises on everything. [24 Frames/LAT]

This will be either be the best thing ever or the worst--unlike, say, Baby Mama, a film I entertained high hopes for, but I suspect was probably just middling. (Yes, I'm venturing an evaluation on a movie I've never seen.) Even if this project turns out to be terrible, however, it will be interesting to see AH and NP occupy the same film, indeed, the same scenes. As Anne gamely noted of herself, she's at the point in her career where she's getting a look at the scripts Portman passes on--a fact that, given the HYPE-rventilation that's greeted Black Swan in just about every quarter, including my beloved New York Magazine, still means something. Might, then, the pairing reveal--or trade on--a certain frisson of competition? Might Anne enter the same bracket as Natalie, through, say, a type of celluloid osmosis? Might it confirm Anne's second-fiddle status, and, if not justify, seal her fate there forever? Or provide our heroine a chance to usurp?

To return to Anne's own Oscar talk, far less plausible than her last foray, Rachel Getting Married, I am sure she does a bang up job with Love and Other Drugs, but I don't care how compelling her performance is--and everyone, including Dana Stevens, a critic I actually like, thinks it really is something--she's not going to get it. Come on, people--it's a romantic comedy! Let's get real.