Could David Gordon Green Become David Gordon Green Again?
Perhaps the most memorable movie review we've read yet in 2001 was Roger Ebert's review of "Your Highness." Ebert was Green's first and loudest champion back in the early days of Green's career, when he was making small, heartbreaking, North Carolina dramas like "All the Real Girls" and "George Washington" and "Undertow." Ebert famously called him "the next great American filmmaker," heady words for a 30-year-old kid no one had ever heard of. Then Green started hanging out with the Seth Rogen crowd (along with longtime Green collaborator Danny McBride), and while "Pineapple Express" was fine, you couldn't help but wonder where all this was going. Then came "Your Highness," a movie we kinda liked. Ebert, definitively, did not.
Ebert's review takes the tone of a parent whose child has become a sullen, misbehaving teenager, or a professor whose prized pupil has let him down:
What calamity has befallen him? He carried my hopes. His first three features were "George Washington" (2000), "All the Real Girls" (2003), "Undertow" (2004), and I gave all three four stars. I was in the hospital when he released "Snow Angels," but it got good reviews. Then came "Pineapple Express," produced by Judd Apatow, which was a pretty good Apatow-style movie, and I figured, all right, David wanted to see how it would feel to have a real budget and work with actors like Seth Rogen, James Franco, Kevin Corrigan, Rosie Perez and McBride (his buddy from college days). That was fair enough. Now comes "Your Highness." The movie is a perplexing collapse of judgment. ... Oh, what a sad movie this is. David Gordon Green has made great films. He should remind himself of that.
Perhaps it was the financial and critical failure of "Your Highness," but it's possible Green may be turning away from the Rogen crowd and at least heading somewhat closer to his roots. Deadline reports that Sony Pictures wants Green to write and direct the movie adaptation of "Q," a successful romantic novel that just came out last August. Here's the Amazon plot description:
Shortly before his wedding, the unnamed hero of this uncommon romance is visited by a man who claims to be his future self and ominously admonishes him that he must not marry the love of his life, Q. At first the protagonist doubts this stranger, but in time he becomes convinced of the authenticity of the warning and leaves his fiancee. The resulting void in his life is impossible to fill. One after the other, future selves arrive urging him to marry someone else, divorce, attend law school, leave law school, travel, join a running club, stop running, study the guitar, the cello, Proust, Buddhism, and opera, and eliminate gluten from his diet. The only constants in this madcap quest for personal improvement are his love for his New York City home and for the irresistible Q.
Interesting! (Though we're a little worried about the use of "madcap" there.) Perhaps the most important aspect of this for Green is that he'll be writing it himself, the first film he's written since "Snow Angels," right before he joined Camp Rogen. We still lament the Will Ferrell "Confederacy of Dunces" movie Green had been planning, the one that fell apart at the last minute. We have faith he and Ebert will end up pals after all, once all is said and all is done.
Sony Acquires 'Q' For David Gordon Green [Deadline]
"Your Highness" review [Roger Ebert]
