Casting the St. Elmo's Fire TV Series

Let's hope for the same hairstyles.

Oh man. There are plans afoot to make the '80s Brat Pack classic St. Elmo's Fire into a new hour-long dramedy series. Fallen angel Topher Grace is one of the producers! I actually don't feel upset about this. I mean, it sounds like it's going to be awful ("I feel it is time to re-create 'Friends' in the hourlong genre and feel like this is the perfect opportunity," says another producer, which = shriek), but the original movie isn't that good to begin with, so let's sit back and watch a pleasant disaster unfold. But how's it gonna work? I mean, who will be in it?

See, the most important thing about the source movie wasn't the plot--a bunch of recent, very-pleased-with-themselves college grads live, work, love, and grow in and around the St. Elmo's Bar & Restaurant in Georgetown--it was the actors. Ohhh those trendy actors! Like Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, be-earring'd Rob Lowe, and a gloriously pompadoured Demi Moore. Basically it was the trendiest cast the '80s had yet seen. Everyone wanted to be talk like them, dress like them, have the same lived-in problems as them. They're all total cliches, sure, but they're the source material cliches for the enusing 25 years of post-adolescent angst fare.

That said, casting will be the most important part of this new series. So who would be good?

For Billy Hicks, the outta control partyer and secretly soulful sax player, played by a 21-year-old Lowe in the film, we'd need someone like Alden Ehrenreich, the up-and-coming NYU student/actor who recently appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro. He's scruffy and dangerous, but in a totally safe and dreamy way.

For Kevin Dolenz, the disaffected aspiring writer so mumblingly played by Andrew McCarthy, you need someone sensitive and whiny and, if you're into that sort of thing, soulfully handsome. In that case, how's about someone like area-complainer Jesse Eisenberg, who's done frustrated intellect so well in films like The Squid & the Whale and Adventureland.

For Alec Newbury, the yuppie-ish young political upstart sarcastically droned by Judd Nelson in the o.g., well... let's throw old Topher a bone there and figure he'll play this part. Sure he's a little old, but that's never stopped TV before. After all, Luke Perry was 72 years old when he began on 90210. So it could work.

For Kirby Keager, the last and lamest of the boys, played by Estevez, you need someone sorta sporty and chipper and earnest and maybe a little square. How about Gaius Charles from Friday Night Lights? He's got that all-American clean-cuttedness that the role requires. Plus he's already proven himself an able television actor.

Onto the girls! Jules van Patten, the richie party girl played by Demi in the original, would need to be glamorous and vulnerable at the same time. Though she'd be a little young for the part, Willa Holland proved she could do both glam and needy on The O.C.. Plus she did a lot of partying on Gossip Girl.

Leslie Hunter, the WASPy aspiring architect yup who dates Alec (played by Sheedy), needs the kind of prickly intelligence that about-to-break Brit Carey Mulligan brings to her work on stage and screen. Sure, they'd never get her, she's about to become a big movie star once An Education comes out (she already has a slew of other big film projects lined up), but we can dream, can't we?

And finally there's Mare Winningham's Wendy Beamish, the walked-over shy rich girl who happens to be a virgin. Hm... so someone innocent yet desperately wanting to break free of that persona... Ohh, she's a little old, but what the hell. How about Mandy Moore? She can act, plus they could make Wendy a secretly aspiring singer! Wouldn't that be fun and now and perfectly annoying?? If they couldn't get Mandy, maybe they could try for Jamie Chung, the former Real Worlder turned actress who's actually been making a decent go of it in the biz recently. She's got the whole innocence thing down, plus she'd probably be a lot cheaper than Miss Mandy.

So there you have it. Those are my ideas. How about you? How would you cast it?