It didn’t work out so well for Michael Moore, but who is to say other documentarians can’t succeed in fiction filmmaking? Recent notables to make the switch have included Nick Broomfield (whose unscripted yet dramatized Battle for Haditha opens at New York’s Film Forum next month), Barbara Kopple, Andrew Jarecki and Seth Gordon, who originally seemed to be crossing the line to remake his own The King of Kong as a narrative feature but has instead become attached to other fiction projects.
The latest, though, is a bit of a shocker, even if he is famous for making a dramatization-heavy doc. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Errol Morris’ next project is a comedy, which he’s currently writing. Titled The End of Everything, the script is at least based on a true story and Morris says the film will be, “a new idea of how to blend drama with reality.”
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On this week’s installment of The Media Diet, we talk to Seth Gordon, director of the documentary King of Kong. King tells the story of Steve Weibe, a mild-mannered middle-school teacher/Donkey Kong phenom who attempts to set the Guinness World Record for highest recorded score on the arcade version of the game. Steve has only one obstacle, and that’s charismatic fast food employee/”Gamer of the Century” Billy Mitchell, who held the Donkey Kong record for 20 years until Weibe managed an unprecedented 1,000,000 point game. Mitchell and Weibe spent several months battling for the Guinness record, and Gordon got it all on film.
It may sound totally dorky, but it’s also a full-on crowd pleaser. Last weekend, I went to a screening at the Museum of the Moving Image, where the median audience member age is probably 65, and the King of Kong trailer brought the house down. You can see what all the fuss is about on August 17, when Kong opens in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Austin (it’s set to expand to additional cities in the weeks to follow; to find out when Kong is coming to your town, go here and click on “Theaters and Tickets” at the bottom of the page). And click through to read Gordon’s thoughts on Uwe Boll, Saved By The Bell, his upcoming feature adaptation of King of Kong, and the Roger Ebert vs. Gamers debate.
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Former architect/advert director/David Fincher protege Joseph Kosinski has been hired to direct a remake of Logan’s Run. The script is to be written by Tim Sexton, who was nominated for an Oscar for Children of Men, and the film is expected to look more like the 1967 novel than the 1976 Michael York film.
