Limp Bizkit split from their record label last month and Fred Durst been directing films since 2007, last an inspirational drama about a girl quarterback conquering pop warner starring Ice Cube, and next rumored to be a “hillbilly Pulp Fiction” starring Paul Walker. Point being, he belongs to the world of film now, so you can look forward to my breathless coverage of everything he does.

Most recently, the pride of Jacksonville hit karaoke night with Nick Swardson and Cedric Yarbrough from Reno 911! Not even the person in charge of hiring GoDaddy girls could dream up a combination that random.

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Every once in a while, I’ll go back and watch music videos that were popular in the late 90s and early 2000s, and I say this with as little hyperbole as possible, but the wonderment I feel towards Limp Bizkit ever being one of the USA’s top music acts has to be similar to the way Germans feel about allowing the Nazis come to power, or that so many of their countrymen were complicit in the Holocaust. Fred Durst has since become a movie director and is soon to become CBS sitcom star, but his reunion with original Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland didn’t go nearly as well, and the band recently got dropped from Interscope, the label they’d been with since 1997. It seems someone vastly overestimated how much we’d all be loving this sh*t right here.

At one time, Jacksonville’s Limp Bizkit could do no wrong. The band’s powerhouse album Significant Other debuted at #1 on Billboard‘s “Top 100 Albums” and sold in excess of 16 million copies around the world.
Even Limp Bizkit‘s poorly-received (and horribly titled) 2000 effort Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water is in the record books as the all-time fastest-selling rock album.

That would be the “The Guinness Book of Insanely-Depressing Statistics,” I’m guessing.

Now the one-time  rap-rock heroes are music industry goats: the band’s latest studio album – Gold Cobra, released over the summer – has only managed to sell a measly 63,000 copies prompting a parting of the ways with Interscope, Bizkit’s longtime major-label imprint.
What’s even more shocking is the fact that Cobra was the first to feature the group’s original line-up since Starfish and it still failed to make even a pebble-sized dent.
For their part, the band is acting like this is good news.
“… Finally we have been able to get off our label and become independent,” frontman Fred Durst offered last month during an appearance on the Poolside With Dean Delray podcast.

“Poolside with Dean Delray.” My God, that name sounds exactly like the kind of podcast Fred Durst would be on. I feel like I have to put sunscreen on my sleeve tattoos just typing it.

So what’s next for the group? Touring in other countries where the band’s legacy is better appreciated, according to Durst.
“We do very, very good on our touring, and we mainly tour outside the United States,” said Durst. “It seems like in the United States, man, they’re waiting on a song, they’re waiting on a hit, and the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily operate that way; they’re, sort of, career people.” [SunshineSlate]

My favorite part of this story was the album cover for Gold Cobra. Holy hell get a load of this thing:

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While you probably remember Fred Durst as the multi-talented lead singer for Limp Bizkit, most famous for “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog-Flavored Water”, the War & Peace of early 2000s Florida rap-rock, the truth is that he’s also a film director, with two feature films already under his stud belt.  He’s currently in pre-production on a thriller he’s directing, and the word is that he’s cast Paul Walker.  That’s right, a collaboration between the 4 Fast 4 Furious guy and the Limp Bizkit guy.  It was only by the grace of God this hadn’t happened already.

Paul Walker is starring in Pawn Shop Chronicles, a thriller that Fred Durst will direct.

I hope it’s about a guy trying to get more than a dollar for his old Limp Bizkit CDs…

“This is a hillbilly Pulp Fiction,” said producer Steve Schur, calling the script “fast-moving and action-packed. It’s also very funny. It’s got all these elements to really pack a punch.”

Adds Durst, “It’s really gonna… BREAK YOUR F*CKIN’ FACE TONIIIIIGHT!” (*DJ scratching*)

The interconnected stories center on a missing wedding ring which leads to a wild-goose chase involving meth addicts, skinheads and an Elvis impersonator.
Actor-turned-scribe Adam Minarovich, who at one point worked in a pawn shop in North Carolina, wrote the script. [THR]

I’d love to see the look on this guy’s face when they told him, “Great news! Your script got bought and they’re turning it into a big Hollywood movie!”  (*dramatic pause*) “Starring Paul Walker and directed by Fred Durst!”

It was probably one of those days where he just didn’t wanna wake up.  I hope he told them where they could stick that cookie, if you know what I mean.

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It’s great that Fred Durst became a movie director.  Not because his movies are any good or because I’ve seen any of them, but because now I can make fun of him and it’s movie related.  As you might imagine, Durst recently took to Twitter to express his sadness at the passing of Michael Jackson, and he did it as only Fred Durst can:

“On this tour I have been paying tribute to MJ by wearing his beat it jacket and rhinestone glove. The irony and timing is shocking. I am very sad. He was truly brilliant and the reason why I love to dance.”

I don’t know about you, but I imagined him covered in sweat, doing the Roger Rabbit at his cousin’s Bar Mitzvah when he sent that.  But wait, there’s more!

“There are only four phenomenons [sic] to truly impact our lives in popular music- Frank Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson. They will all live forever within me.”

Hmm, I’m not sure whether to make fun of him for having seven guys inside him or because he thinks he’s going to live forever.  Maybe he’s a gay vampire.  Later on, Durst answered a question about whether he and Michael Jackson had ever met:

“I did. Twice. Spent several hrs hanging and talking. Another time went to ceasars palace w him, my friend Ron, and Chris Tucker to virgin megastore [so was it Caesar's Palace or Virgin Megastore?  Jeez you're an idiot. -Ed.]. It was madness. Great memories.”

Are Fred Durst and Brett Ratner the same person?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in the same place at the same time.  “It’s a sad day.  He was just really a source of influential to me when I was writing ‘Chocolate Starfish and the Hot-Dog Flavored Water.’”

[and don't forget to vote for #5, the only Fred-Durst-related definition of Durst on UrbanDictionary. Thanks to Jacktion! for that]

Back in the early days of FilmDrunk, we decided the term “jump the shark” had jumped the shark, so we replaced it with “durst,” in honor of Fred Durst.  Little did we know that he’d become a film director and would even get decent reviews for The Education of Charlie Banks.  Tucked into a recent THR review is the news that Durst’s next project is a script by Seven writer Andrew Kevin Walker*. From THR…

“I’m going to direct ‘Psycho Killer,” Durst said. “I’m very excited about it. It’s not a throwaway slasher genre film. It’s a very smart, really compelling story about a serial killer on a mission for Satan.”

Is he being serious?  Hard to tell.  The hat says no but the stupid look on his face says yes.

*Andrew Ke7in Walker?