Errol Morris, the beloved documentarian currently promoting his nonfiction film Tabloid, about a famous British tabloid story involving the alleged kidnapping and female-on-male rape of a Mormon missionary, is planning ahead. He’s collaborating with Ira Glass on a film based on Sam Shaw’s This American Life report–“one of the best things that they’ve done—that’s not my opinion, but many, many people are aware of it.”
Was this Mr. Morris’s first non-documentary film? “Essentially it will be. It’s a long story.” (He also directed 1991’s The Dark Wind, starring Lou Diamond Phillips.)
The film, as previously reported, is an adaptation of a 2008 report on Bob Nelson, a self-styled cryogenics pioneer. Mr. Morris claims the film, not listed on IMDB, will be written by Zach Helm, writer of the aptly titled Will Ferrell vehicle Stranger Than Fiction. This American Life previously spawned the kids’-movie adaptation Unaccompanied Minors, but Mr. Morris’s pedigree–and unique interests–promise to make this a bit more highbrow, and simultaneously more intriguingly tabloid-y.
“Bob Nelson wrote a book called We Froze the First Man,” marveled Mr. Morris, whose work has long been enamored of the weird corners of human experience. “Now I will submit to you: Is that a tabloid story?” (We agreed that it was.)
ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_
