If anyone knows how to toe the line between the dark and funny, it's Werner Herzog. In both his documentaries and features, the director often sheds a light on the absurdities of even the most harrowing of situations involving his characters, and he's signed up to helm a new project that will once again find him in uniquely tricky territory.
Herzog will direct an adaptation of DBC Pierre's "Vernon God Little," with a script by Andrew Birkin ("Perfume," "Joan Of Arc," "Omen III") in a story that follows the titular character, who is accused of being an accomplice after a school shooting, and flees to Mexico as a result. Coming off his series of docs "Death Row," it seems Herzog has a found a new angle with which to explore a particularly galling incident, though something with a bit more laughs and a barbed look at how the media and public handle these situations. Here's the synopsis from Amazon:
When sixteen kids are shot on high school grounds, everyone looks for someone to blame. Meet Vernon Little, under arrest at the sheriff's office, a teenager wearing nothing but yesterday's underwear and his prized logo sneakers. Moments after the shooter, his best buddy, turns the gun on himself, Vernon is pinned as an accomplice. Out for revenge are the townspeople, the cable news networks, and Deputy Vaine Gurie, a woman whose zeal for the Pritikin diet is eclipsed only by her appetite for barbecued ribs from the Bar-B-Chew Barn. So Vernon does what any red-blooded American teenager would do; he takes off for Mexico.
Vernon God Little is a provocatively satirical, riotously funny look at violence, materialism, and the American media.
The will be Herzog's "next project" according to Variety, but there's no word on when it will actually shoot. We wonder if this means the helmer's brewing Gertrude Bell biopic "Queen Of The Desert" that has Naomi Watts and Robert Pattinson attached and is slated for a late fall shoot (last we heard) is still in the cards. We certainly hope so, but if not, this is a decent replacement.
