“I have a sense of humor. I’m not always this lyrical, slow-moving, Southern crybaby.” If the hallmark of the film auteur is cultivating and identifying a unique style, former indie wunderkind David Gordon Green has been systematically tearing down his signature status for a few years now.
Initially known for his Terrence Malick-like and atmospheric coming-of-age tales set in the South, Green quickly switched gears, moving to a succession of studio comedies (“Pineapple Express,” “Your Highness,” “The Sitter”). While the move toward broad (though absurdist) comedy baffled many, it made a lot of sense if you were paying attention to his early goals. Despite being known for films like “George Washington” and “All The Real Girls,” Green had been talking up his eclectic taste and his burning desire to tackle disparate genres for years.
Suffering from creative A.D.D. and thirsty for different experiences, the young filmmaker put his money where his mouth was and began tackling different genres with ardent zeal. First came 2004’s “Undertow,” a ’70s-like gothic fairy tale that melded tones of horror, suspense and his impressionistic meanderings (produced by Terrence Malick to boot, Green described it as “Goonies” meets “Deliverance”). He then began adapting novels with furious aplomb which begat the drama, “Snow Angels.” Green’s vocal desire to tackle comedy, a genre he’d been hot to try on forever (see the very subtle comedy of the indie heartbreak film, “All The Real Girls” and the lighter moments in ‘Angels’) finally found him room within the Judd Apatow clique and his first summer comedy blockbuster, the stoner action flick, “Pineapple Express.” ‘Express’ and the subsequent comedies flew him dangerously close to the sun of mainstream appeal and acceptance, but again before you could pigeonhole him, he was off doing small, unannounced indie “Prince Avalanche” (which in his genre-defying way is part comedy bromance and part contemplative meditation on friendship and manhood).
When not directing, Green became a writing gun for hire over the years and the uber-prolific filmmaker churned out a ton of scripts in the early aughts, many of which never came to pass. “My hope is that I can dabble in all genres because, let’s face it, I’m a freakin’ movie geek and like a lot of different kind of movies,” he told IFC in 2008. And dabble he has. With “Joe,” starring Nicolas Cage, his dark gritty drama hitting theaters over the weekend (not without its elements of comedy either), we thought we’d take a look at the lost, still unmade and in many cases potentially abandoned film projects of filmmaker David Gordon Green.
“Goat”
Adapted by Green from the Brad Land memoir about fraternity hazing, the project was at one point in pre-production with Emile Hirsch attached to star, but it fell on the back burner. “I play Brad Land. I’m a junior pledging to be in a fraternity. You’ll see the inside world of it,” Hirsch told MTV in 2005. Rumor had Mike Nichols tackling the project at one point, but it seems like its moment has past. From these conversations, Green would eventually cast Hirsch in 2013’s “Prince Avalanche.”
The Untitled Motorcross Movie
A coming-of-age film about James “Bubba” Stewart, a teen “who is to motocross racing what Tiger Woods is to golf,” was written by Green for Tom Cruise‘s Cruise/Wagner Productions while the “Top Gun” star had his deal at Paramount. And the film was revving up pre-production in fall 2005, but after the whole Sumner Redstone Cruise/Paramount imbroglio the following year, the project was kicked over to Sam Jones, the director behind the Wilco documentary,”I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.”
“Confederacy of Dunces”
Green campaigned hard for the film, knocking down the doors of producer Steven Soderbergh who wrote a draft of the screenplay with Scott Kramer in 2002, but the project became logjammed. “There were too many cooks involved, too many producers, the egos of a lot of people,” Green told MTV in 2004 of the problems that unraveled the ‘Dunces’ production. “It had a lot of financial baggage [that] was propelling the budget to a place where you would have to make compromises in casting and the narrative by the time you started paying off all these jackasses.” Will Ferrell, Mos Def and Drew Barrymore were attached at one point, but don’t look for this one to start up anytime soon, if ever. “It was a circumstance where every move needed to be approved and calculated and re-approved and baggage kept getting bigger and bigger. I don’t think anyone can make it until someone gets paid off or dies,” he said (there was massive development hell on this one with Soderbergh and Kramer going as far as suing producer Scott Rudin when he tried to go out on his own with the project and it changed hands several times going from New Line to Paramount to Miramax and Disney—where there was internal friction—and eventually back to Paramount). They’ve tried to make it since, with one recent iteration with Zach Galifianakis, but it’s seemingly gotten nowhere for the same reasons.