Errol Morris, he of the heavy and solemn (at least recently, “Fog of War,” the upcoming Abu Ghraib scandal film, “Standard Operating Procedure”) political-doc mien isn’t exactly known as the king of comedy, but regardless, is going to try his hand at a comedic film according to the Hollywood Reporter.
This strikes many as odd, and it is being that he is a documentarian first, but let’s not forget that Morris did already try his hand at fiction with mostly disastrous results back in 1991 with the film, “The Dark Wind” Didn’t see it? Don’t worry, no one else did either (it starred C-lister Lou Diamond Phillips in a plot about something or other with Indian reservations – naturally).
The film already has a title, “The End of Everything,” and its random “plot” is apparently supposed to involves a wingless bird, “Gone With the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell, a volcano and Laura Bush. Okkkkk, then. Let’s hope it’s not too much on the wacky side (sounds a little disparate like, “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control,” but fiction and funny?)
Morris said he wants to prove he has the comedic skills to pay the bills (hey, “Vernon, Florida” is hilarious, but that’s a doc). “I’m a funny guy, and I’d like to make something funny now,” he said. “I can’t see myself making one political film after another. I’m glad I made these two movies, but I’d like to do something different.”
Defamer recently asked, Does Confident Errol Morris Have the Film to Break the Iraq Box Office Curse?, with ‘Standard Op,’ which is wildly absurd posit considering Ryan Phillipe and Abbie Cornish couldn’t do it with “Stop Loss,” but then again, it was just a headline.
Ever since as far back as 1988’s masterful, “The Thin Blue Line,” Morris has used reenactments in documentaries (in fact the technique was so powerful and new in that film, they ushered in a wave of cheap reenactments, mostly for bad TV shows that didn’t have the footage to give you the proper context) and ‘Standard Op’ is no different. As Vulture points out, he’s taken a lot of heat for it over the years from more steadfast and purist documentarians, but speaking to the New York Magazine blog he defended his position and technique, yet again.
“It’s a movie taking you into a series of photographs. How do you take someone into the moment that a photograph is taken? How do you create a context around it? I did it in this movie with retrospective accounts, first-person accounts of the people who were there when the pictures were taken, and things that bring you into that moment. No reenactments, no movie” (as they also point out, he goes on at length about reenactments on his New York Times blog, Zoom, which is all about an intellectual take on our relationship to photographs).
“Standard Operating Procedure” is in theaters on April 25 (we missed our screening earlier in March, oh well, see you in line, pleebs!). The score is surprisingly not handled by the great Phillip Glass this time out, but instead composed by Danny Elfman. We also thought this doc might just be about the two most homeliest soldiers to ever fall in love, but we were wrong.
Watch: Standard Operating Procedure trailer