The last time we heard from Gaspar Noé he was taking us on a demented POV view through the seamy underbelly of Tokyo in “Enter The Void” and crying over “Avatar.” And while he’s currently contributing to the forthcoming omnibus “7 Days In Havana,” been eyeing Bret Easton Ellis‘ “The Golden Suicides” and talking about a “sentimental, erotic” movie he wants to make, the unpredictable helmer may have something else completely different in store for us.
Talking recently with Film Comment (print edition via IFC) B-movie maven Larry Cohen — best known for directing blaxploitation classics “Hell Up In Harlem” and “Black Caesar” as well as the horror flick “It’s Alive” — revealed that he was approached by a French director, whose name he couldn’t recall, looking to acquire the remake rights to his bonkers “God Told Me To.” Here’s the excerpt from the magazine — the dots are pretty easy to put together:
The 70-year-old Cohen mentioned that he had just come from a meeting with an interesting young Frenchman who was seeking the rights to remake ‘God Told Me To.’ ‘What’s his name?’ inquired the staffer. ‘I don’t remember, but he gave me some DVDs of his films.’ The director rummaged in a bag and produced copies of “Irreversible” and “Enter the Void.”
Of course, it still remains to be seen if this will even pan out but the material is directly in Noe’s wheelhouse. The story follows an NYPD cop who has to investigate a series of brutal murders committed, seemingly randomly, by people that claim — you guessed it — “God told me to.” And that’s just the beginning of a story that gets pretty out there, but if you happen to pick up the DVD of the 1976 film keep an eye out and you’ll see Andy Kaufman in his first even big screen appearance playing, appropriately, a possessed policeman. Or you can just watch the scene below.
At any rate, murderers taking their instructions from God in a movie directed by Gaspar Noé? Uh, yeah, that would be amazing. So c’mon Larry, let that Frenchman whose name you can’t remember take on the movie.