I love Michel Gondry for his imagination and seemingly boundless talent, but I wonder how frustrating it would be to have him for a father. Does he ever let up on the whimsy? Does he invest, say, the taking out of the trash with the same exhaustive inventiveness he throws into his sometimes brilliant (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), sometimes wearying (The Science of Sleep) films? And, if so, would this not completely warp a child’s sensibilities?
Seeing as how Gondry is basing his next film on the outlandishly dark and violent art of his son, Paul, I’m thinking the answer to that question is "Fuck, yes." It’s a shame the Wyeths never hooked up like this. And it’s also a great comfort to know that Daniel Clowes has been brought in to make sense of the project, as Gondry pere has a hard enough time keeping his own narratives under control. The film is currently titled Migel Munya (at least, that’s what /film‘s Peter Sciretta thinks Gondry said), and Michel describes it thusly:
"[The movie is] about a dictator who runs a crazy world where hair is the source of energy. The people there are forced to create art, and if the art is too good they are executed. So the dictator there doesn’t want anyone to be better than him so he kills the inmates who make good art. They try to make rubbish art but sometimes the worse it is for them, the better it is for the dictator."
Good luck, Daniel Clowes.
Clowes’s last produced screenplay was the massively disappointing Art School Confidential (correctly deemed one of our 50 Greatest Disappointments by Mr. Russ Fischer), but Ghost World buys him a pass. Since Clowes is currently on strike with the rest of the WGA, I can’t imagine he’s doing much work on the script at present; in other words, I wouldn’t expect to see Migel Munya for another couple of years.