Oh, Variety, you’ve done it again. Earlier this year you goinked my Zyzzyx Road story without giving me any credit, and eventually had to run a piece saying CHUD originated Zyzzyx Fever. Today you ran a piece about how Marc Rocco – whose last directorial gig was Murder in the First in 1995 – would be helming an adaptation of Jim Thompson’s classic noir The Killer Inside Me.
Except that he isn’t. And how was that discovered? Why, IGN – aka a website – found out. Now Variety has the web fact checking for them!
IGN contacted the producers of The Killer Inside Me, and their response can be boiled down to, ‘Who the fuck is Marc Rocco?’ "This Variety article is the first I have heard the name Marc Rocco in association with my motion picture project Killer Inside Me,” producer Chris Hanley told IGN. “I was not consulted at all by Variety, or by any of the people purporting to be financing or directing the movie in that article. I certainly was not in a position to support the director etc. as stated in the article as I knew nothing about it. And I am the main rights holder I may add."
Oh, snap! You may add, Mr. Hanley, you may fucking add indeed.
Hanley tells IGN that he’s in talks with The Painted Veil director John Curran to helm the movie… and that he’s wording a retraction for Variety to run.
The Killer Inside Me may be my favorite Jim Thompson book – and he’s one of my favorite writers, so that’s saying a lot. The book is way ahead of its time, a nihilistic story about Lou Ford, a small town Texas sheriff who seems like a nice, dimwitted guy – but who is actually a sociopathic killer. Stacy Keach played Lou Ford in a 1976 adaptation of the book.