Spoutblog recently had a chance to sit down with Robert Siegel for an interview. Not only has Siegel written this season’s critical darling “The Wrestler,” but he’s also one of the founders of the satirical newspaper The Onion, and is the toast of the town after his directorial debut, “Big Fan,” starring comedian Patton Oswalt, has been well-received at Sundance.
The interview is filled with a lot of helpful insights for those looking to break into screenwriting, but it also features Siegel discussing a couple of projects he was involved in. One that he mentions for Judd Apatow is Universal’s “The Recruiter,” a stalled vehicle for “40 Year Old Virgin” star Romany Malco that we featured in a Judd Apatow catch-all piece a year ago. Siegel refers to it as a for-hire gig that his heart wasn’t into, and Malco has spoke about the film, about a hotshot military recruiter, as stemming from a concept he came up with, so it likely passed through many hands on the road to development, often under the vaguely different title “The Military Recruiter.” Also known as “The Marine Recruiter,” the project was to be produced by Apatow but apparently has died on the vine.
The other project Siegel mentions is much more intriguing. “Ballad Of The Whiskey Robber” is a project with Johnny Depp that Siegel doesn’t elaborate on, but it’s likely a biopic of the Whiskey Robber of Hungary, the elusive Attila Ambrus. From 1993 to ’99, Ambrus robbed Hungarian institutions of over a million dollars over the course of twenty seven robberies, using his position on the Hungarian national hockey team as second-string goalie and team janitor as a cover. He was often seen before each robbery drinking Johnny Walker Red at a local bar, and because of his seemingly mythic exploits, he became something of a national hero, a status furthered by Ambrus’ tendency to bring female bank tellers flowers, send the cops wine, and wear outlandish disguises in lieu of deploying force- no one was ever harmed during his robberies.
Ambrus fancies himself a legend as well- at every oppostunity, he’s promoted the book “The Ballad Of The Whiskey Robber” by Julian Rubenstein, supposedly the basis for the script. He’s reportedly especially proud of an improbable prison break where he used “rope made of shredded sheets, electric cords, and shoe laces,” according to Wikipedia. He’s currently serving a seventeen year prison sentence, but you could always friend him on MySpace. The project remains set up at WB for Depp, but it doesn’t appear to be a high priority for either party, but it should at least be recognized as one of Hollywood’s most promising theoretical films.
Siegel also says he was paid to write a script for Amy Heckerling called, “Sweat,” but it too seemed to go nowhere and none of them were true passion projects. “They were all studio jobs… you know, just jobs,” he said.