Hollywood: Giving The People What They Think They Sort Of Maybe Might Need Someday

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn and Late Show With David Letterman scribe Tom Ruprecht are at work on writing and producing a movie version of Chuck Klosterman’s coming-of-age-with-metal memoir Fargo Rock City. But those of you expecting a movie that plumbed the depths of one teenager’s rotting cassette collection (with a really heaping dash of Catholic imagery) will be disappointed, since the flick is going to have the music content turned down and the outcast angst cranked up all the way:

“Seventeen or eighteen is the perfect age for characters in a movie like this, because it’s at that age that you have drivers licenses and a certain amount of independence, but you’re still young enough that you can totally make terrible decisions,” Finn told us. “And you’re still young enough that you can have a two-hour argument over whether Motley Crue would beat Guns ‘N Roses in a fight.” The pic will concentrate on particular portions of the book, including a chapter in which a faulty ATM dispenses excessive amounts of money to Klosterman, which both Finn and Ruprecht say they see as metaphors of the gilded age and easy credit of both the 1980’s and the past few years. While music is an important theme in the memoir, it won’t be featured quite as prominently as it is in Klosterman’s writing. “Heavy metal is kind of a common bond among a group of friends,” Ruprecht said. “It’s the language they speak. But this will also be a universal story of dorky kids trying to be cool.”

Wow, a coming-of-age movie about dorky dudes looking to “be cool,” and, no doubt, score the right hot lady? How devastatingly out-there! I hope they can write the movie fast enough so Jonah Hill and Michael Cera can star before they “age out” of the lead roles. (NB: I really didn’t like Fargo Rock City at all on first read, finding it room-hurlingly indulgent even for the already-indulgent genre in which it operated—I distinctly remember thinking “this is some sub-Diaryland bullshit” at more than one point while reading it. Although I do wonder if a second read eightish years after the first would result in me being kinder? Hmm.) Letterman writer, Hold Steady singer in a dream/weird/promising collaboration [THR via MetalSucks]