Fox Searchlight Looks to Develop Russ Meyer Biopic with David O. Russell
by Scott Nye
As a big fan of "Three Kings" and "I Heart Huckabees," it's great to see David O. Russell getting all this attention all of a sudden.
And better still, he really deserves it - "The Fighter," while still the most mainstream of his films, still has the same eccentricicities as his earlier work and is just a well-made movie all around.
He's still on tap for the "Uncharted" adaptation next, but after that? Fox Searchlight wants to get a long-discussed Russ Meyer biopic to screens, and believes Russell is the man for the job.
Deadline reports that the indie branch of the mega studio is developing a pitch package for the director, which first requires them to get their legal stuff in order.
They're looking to Jimmy McDonough's biography, "Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film" for an adaptation to be written by Merritt Johnson.
Johnson was actually Russell's assistant on "Three Kings," but more recently has become to go-to guy for eccentric biopics, having scripted both the award-winning HBO film "Temple Grandin" and the long-in-development "Lovelace," about the "Deep Throat" star.
Meyer's professional story is obviously wild and weird enough for Russell to wrap his head around, but given that Meyer's "Personal and family life" section of his Wikipedia page begins with a trip to a French brothel with Ernest Hemingway, his life away from the set shouldn't be left to the cutting room floor, either.
If you're not familiar with Meyer's work, "Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!" and "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" would be good places to start. The former is being shown here in Los Angeles at the New Beverly on April 13th and 14th, and the latter? Written by Roger Ebert. That instantly equals "culture."