Sorry, octopus Christian Grey.

Thanks to his already strong relationship with Focus Features, director Gus Van Sant may be the man for the job of directing the big screen adaptation of E.L. James’ best-selling Fifty Shades of Grey erotic Twilight fan fiction. I mean, bondage romance. Sorry, I get those two descriptions confused sometimes. And if he’s not the favorite, Van Sant is at least making his presence known as he recruited Magic Mike star Alex Pettyfer to film some test sex scenes.

But ladies, before you go making “He can pet my fur” jokes, please know that this doesn’t mean that Pettyfer is going to be cast as Christian Grey. That role could still very well go to Kevin James.

Insiders stressed that Pettyfer was cast as Grey just for the tape, not the movie, though Universal just got into bed with the 23 year-old actor on its sexy remake of “Endless Love,” which he is currently shooting in Atlanta. TheWrap was unable to confirm the identity of the actress cast at Steele, the impressionable young woman who falls for kinky billionaire Grey. (Via The Wrap)

Obviously, as my amazing and now wasted banner image for 50,000 Shades of Grey Under the Sea shows us, Emma Watson was the most recently rumored actress to be up for the role of Anastasia Steele. That was according to some documents or something that were intercepted by hackers in the most unexciting hacking since your teenage sister left her Facebook logged in at the Apple Store.

As for Van Sant, he is not currently working on any films so his schedule is open, but Focus never asked him or Pettyfer to do this, so this is basically a story about an older man who tricked a young actor into having simulated sex on camera. Or Thursday, as people in Hollywood call it.

"No, YOUR Oscah's queah."

Matt Damon was set to make his directorial debut with Gold Mist (which I assume is a love story between a queef and a golden shower), co-written by Damon from a first draft by author Dave Eggers (who also wrote Where the Wild Things Are and Away We Go). Only now, Deadline reports that Damon couldn’t commit the time for prep and pre-production, and has handed directing duties to Gus Van Sant, who directed Damon and Affleck’s Oscar-winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting.

The catalyst for the project was John Krasinski, who is making the transition to features as he wraps the final season of the NBC sitcom The Office. Krasinski had an idea for a film that had resonance in the current climate of economic hardship caused by corporate greed. Krasinski paid Eggers to write the first draft, then showed it to Damon and Producer Chris Moore while the latter were making The Adjustment Bureau, which starred Damon and Krasinski’s wife, Emily Blunt.

Gold Mist, is a Capraesque tale in which Damon and Krasinski play rival corporate executives. Damon plays a sales executive who arrives in a small town only to have his whole life called into question. [Deadline]

This is probably unfair, but when I imagine the three of them writing this together, I picture Matt Damon and Dave Eggers bouncing ideas off each other while John Krasinski just sits there making the occasional smug douche face.

Following the overwhelming success of my #BanksyisJamesFranco Twitter campaign, which was even (unknowingly) picked up by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof (BEAT YOU BY A WEEK, LINDELOF!), I thought it was time for another bi-weekly segment of “What Wacky Thing is James Franco Doing Now?”

The wacky thing my fellow Columbia creative writing MFA is doing (we get equal billing in the alumni mag, of course) is exhibiting a 12-hour movie he made using the outtakes from My Own Private Idaho.  Which was 107 minutes.  GRRR, ART!

“Unfinished” features two films, Endless Idaho and My Own Private River, which are collaborations between Van Sant and Franco. After casting Franco in the award-winning film Milk (2008), Van Sant showed him the dailies and other footage that he had shot many years before for My Own Private Idaho (1991), which starred River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves as street hustlers in Portland, Oregon. Much of this material did not make it into the final cut, and so Franco decided to fashion it into two new films, riffing off the original title.

For Endless Idaho, Franco edited outtakes, deleted scenes, alternate takes, and behind-the-scenes footage from My Own Private Idaho into a 12-hour film. Endless Idaho provides an unprecedented look into the workaday process of making a movie, from location scouting to repeated takes.

My Own Private River consists largely of shots of Phoenix ‘s character, Mike, woven into a compelling portrait. The score is by Michael Stipe [of R.E.M.], who is an art school drop-out. [GagosianGallery via Moviefone]

A 12-hour movie, huh?  In between his classwork for his five grad school programs, prep for the Oscars, writing books, and memorizing scripts, I’m sure he watched those 12 hours of footage many, many times to ensure the edits were just right. (*fart noise*) The question remains: how do you turn footage for a 107-minute movie into a 12-hour movie?  Answer: 10 STRAIGHT HOURS OF DICKNOSE!

^{(Bella’s broken vampire fetus)}

Remember Breaking Dawn?  The last movie in the Twilight series with the snorkeling vampires and the CGI telepathic vampire adult-baby who eats its way out of the womb and gets macked on by a full-grown werewolf?  Yeah that one.  Summit is still trying to find a director for the movie. So naturally they asked THREE OSCAR WINNERS.

Sources tell EW that the studio has reached out to at least three top-notch directors, including Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation), Gus Van Sant (Milk), and Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) to gauge their interest in what is likely to be two movies. (Van Sant’s reps confirmed that he’s been approached, but Coppola and Condon’s people didn’t return phone calls by press time. Summit declined to comment.) [EW]

Meanwhile, I have my own sources at Summit, who tell me, “I tried to hook up with three people but they were out of my league and now they won’t call me back MLIT.”  Then they shared a bowl of ice cream with their 30 cats.

Gus Van Sant (director of Milk and Good Will Hunting, among other things) will team up with Bret Easton Ellis, (writer of the books American Psycho and Rules of Attraction, among other things) to write a film about two artists who committed suicide.  They’ll be adapting…

“The Golden Suicides,” a Vanity Fair article about the double suicide of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake [pictured]. Van Sant is involved only as writer at this point.  Duncan and Blake formed a popular couple on the downtown New York and Venice, Calif., art scenes. She was one of the first videogame designers for girls, and his “digital paintings” — kaleidoscopic images shown on plasma screens — established him as a rising star on the circuit.

The couple descended into a paranoid spiral when the artists developed a consuming belief that government and religious organizations were conspiring against them. She killed herself in 2007. Blake found her body on the floor of their bedroom, and walked into the Atlantic Ocean a week later, ending his life. [Variety]

Since Van Sant and Easton Ellis are both at their best when they’re not being pretentious (i.e., not like Elephant for Van Sant or Glamorama for Easton Ellis), a movie about artists who commit suicide might not be the best fit.  Suicide is the ultimate film school cliché.  Artsy kids think making a movie about suicide will make them seem deep for some reason.  I had a film class in college where like three of the shorts were about suicide.  Remember the guy on Real World Brooklyn who was in a film class?  Guess what his movie was about.  Yep, suicide.  Suicides really aren’t that interesting.  You think killing yourself is going to blow everyone’s mind by how punk rock you are, and people might be shocked at first, but in ten minutes they’re still gonna go back to thinking about what they want for lunch.

Read the rest of this entry »