Fox Searchlight is negotiating for the rights to a biopic about The Ramones, which is awesome because they make by far my favorite t-shirts at Target. Great logos.

The specialty division is in negotiations to board a project about the life of the Ramones, based on a memoir titled “I Slept With Joey Ramone” by the musician’s brother — and, notably, featuring the band’s tunes. Written by Joey Ramone’s brother Mickey Leigh and longtime punk writer and Ramones chronicler Legs McNeil, the book centers on the life of Joey Ramone, aka Jeffrey Hyman.  The memoir is set to be published by Simon & Schuster imprint Fireside in December.  Manager-producer Rory Rosegarten is a former exec producer on “Everybody Loves Raymond” who negotiated several years ago to buy the rights to the book as it was being written and, most critically, the rights to the music. [Variety]

Of course, there was already Rock N Roll High School (which Howard Stern wants to remake — with script by Alex Winter!), and the 2004 documentary End of the Century, so one wonders why we’d need a biopic. Also, almost the whole band is dead. But hey, those t-shirts ain’t gonna sell themselves, right?  After all, this a a producer on Everybody Loves Raymond we’re talking here.  Maybe they could call it Everybody Loves Raymones. Oof, it hurt to type that.  I apologize.  Also, there’s this:

The difficulties of getting a Ramones movie made was nodded to in a plot line on third season of “Entourage,” which saw a long-gestating Ramones script pounced on by the show’s fictional Vincent Chase, who subsequently lost the project after agent Ari Gold double-dealed one too many times. The arc was best remembered for a trademark line from Martin Landau’s character, standing in for a thinly veiled Bob Evans, asking “Is that something you might be interested in?”

Was that an Entourage inside joke?  Were we supposed to get that?  Variety writer guy: “You know what this story reminds me of?  This one Entourage episode where Drama was all like, ‘Victory!’  Haha, what a a laffer!”  Anyway, if you ever need proof something’s a bad idea, you can’t do much better than “Why that’s funny, Vinny Chase was considering doing the same thing on Entourage.”

[thanks to BDarbs for the tip]