There are a lot of eyebrow-raising moments in this interview with Chicago 10 director Brett Morgan, in which he announces that his next project will be a Courtney Love-approved documentary about Kurt Cobain. Some of it is cringe-worthy, some of it is intriguing, most of it is somewhat WTF? On the good side, it sounds like the film will incorporate some material we haven’t seen before:

…we’ll have the music of course but [also] his home movies. He did stop action animation, which I don’t know if anyone’s ever seen but I saw it and it’s fucking great. I mean it was crude and I’m gonna probably refine it, you know…

…but on the bad side…

I mean one of the things I think with all my movies, if I won the lottery last night you know, one day I’d love to open up a theme park like Disneyland with rides based on all my movies because I think that like when I did The Kid Stays in The Picture, to me it was like the Disneyland ride about Bob Evans. If Disneyland had a ride called Bob Evans The Kid Says in the Picture it’s that? When I did Chicago 10, I kept thinking this is a Chicago experience. This is like Space Mountain with like police coming out at you and whatnot. The same thing with Kurt Cobain, it’s what the Seattle music experience should be in a way. It’s going to be like this 3 dimensional visceral sort of sublime you know movie…ultimately I think the goal for that film is to make sort of a Catcher on the Rye for the next decade?

I love it that that last part is phrased as a question. Anyway, as wary as I am of the notion of a documentary modeled after a theme park ride seeking to usurp the greatest novel ever about teen alienation, I think I’m a little bit more troubled about a few statements Morgen makes which sound vaguely familiar. More after the jump.

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I don’t know how I missed this in this week’s trades, but I guess that’s what Pajiba is for: Diablo Cody has sold yet another screenplay, this time for a “comedic supernatural thriller” starring Transformers babe Megan Fox, titled Jennifer’s Body. Which is also the title of a Hole song, and I don’t think that’s an accident–an entire scene in the Cody-scripted Juno revolves around a song from the same album (I *think* it was “Doll Parts”, but I could be wrong). This puts Cody and I in an exclusive club: we’re possibly the only mid-90s Courtney Love apologists left.

Pajiba also spots a kinship between former stripper Cody and Fox, who “looks like she would be working the pole in some dive in Panorama City if not for the serendipitous intervention of Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay.” For her part, on her blog Cody says Fox “is hotter than the earth’s core. And now–Hollywood’s tiresome profusion of ‘girlfriend roles’ be damned–she’s going to literally get out there AND DESTROY SOME FUCKING BOYS.”

• David Benioff will adapt Charles Cross’ Kurt Cobain bio Heavier Than Heaven for a pic for Universal. Courtney Love and her lawyer, Howard Weitzman, will executive produce. Nikki Finke quickly railed against Love’s involvement, saying that Universal cannot “expect truthfulness” from a biopic with the backing of Cobain’s controversial widow. “This movie is gonna get crucified by critics, audiences and Nirvana fans just by involving Courtney,” Finke predicts, implying that only a Courtney-bashing Cobain biopic could give the fans the “truthfulness” they apparently require.
• Michael Bay’s production company has been working on a remake of The Birds for at least two and a half years; Naomi Watts has been attached for at least a year. So I guess the kernel of news in this story is the fact that Martin Campbell will direct, and Universal has no plans to rush the film into production before the various labor strikes commence.
• Roger Ebert will be present to accept a tribute at the Gotham Awards in Brooklyn next month. It will mark his second public appearance since falling ill in mid-2006, after his own Overlooked Film Festival earlier this year (although I did see him in screening-hopping in Toronto).

• They’re not a trade, but they’ve got the biopic casting news everyone’s talking about: MTV reports that Anna Faris has won the starring role in a film about Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace. The last time I wrote about this project was in March 2005; at that time, Courtney Love was set to star.
• Brad Pitt will replace Matt Damon in The Fighter, a drama about an Irish lightweight boxing champion. Damon, according to Variety, “had too many projects on his dance card to make the film on the schedule Par[amount] wanted.”
• Brett Ratner is going to make a movie about Frank Sinatra’s long-suffering valet, and guess which Rush Hour veteran is set to star? It’s going to be based on a book by William Stadiem, who says of Ratner, “I think he’s channeling Frank sometimes.”
• Magnolia’s recently-announced genre label has made two new acquisitions, both starring martial arts star Marko Zaror: Kiltro and Mirageman.

Filmmaker A.J. Schnack, who usually blogs here, has launched a new blog devoted to his upcoming Kurt Cobain documentary, Kurt Cobain: About a Son. I found the above clip from the film on the new blog, but it’s apparently been on YouTube for a while — behold the 78 comments it’s earned, which include such insights as “Courtney love is bitch. I hope she burns in hell.” and “Kurt Cobain is alive, Gods never dies..”

It’s frustrating to see that there’s still so much anger and speculation surrounding interest Cobain’s manner of death, because Schnack’s film (which, in tone and content, is well represented by this clip) really has no interest in any of the conspiracy theories. Based on audio interviews conducted by journalist Michael Azerad for a circa 1993 book about Nirvana, it’s a poetic and introspective portrait that does a lot to puncture the “Cobain was a God brought down by a harpie devil” myth that I’m sure most reasonable people grew tired of about ten years ago.