As some Film Junk readers may know, I’m a huge fan of Errol Morris. He is, without question, one of my top five directors of all time. But even I was bored to death when I recently checked out his only fictional film, The Dark Wind. This middle of the road murder mystery is so forgettable that most people don’t even realize it’s a part of Morris’ filmography. It’s too bad too, because after his amazing work on The Thin Blue Line, you’d think the jump to a big screen thriller would be a great match; especially considering he brought Blue Line’s cinematographer, Stefan Czapsky, along for the ride. Unfortunately, the results were closer to an excrutiatingly slow paced, glorified episode of Scooby Doo.

That was 1991. I think enough time has passed to get excited for Morris’ second attempt at a ‘narrative’ piece. According to Variety, his next project is a big screen adaptation of ‘We Froze the First Man’. Haven’t heard of it. BUT…the interesting part is this story was recently featured on an episode of This American Life — titled ‘You’re as Cold as Ice’ — and will actually be produced under their new feature film production company! I’ve always thought the TV show had a ‘First Person’ feel to it, and I’m guessing the radio program was inspired by Morris’ films, considering the fact that the show’s host, Ira Glass, is the first cousin of long time Morris’ collaborator Philip Glass.

According to the Variety article, the story “centers on Nelson, a TV repairman who in the 1960s joined a group of enthusiasts who believed they could cheat death with a new technology: cryonics. But freezing dead people so scientists could reanimate them in the future turned out to be harder than Nelson thought.” Sounds pretty awesome to me! The screenplay will be written by Zach Helm, who’d previously wrote Stranger Than Fiction and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, both of which were adapted from his own novels. I haven’t seen either of those films, but to be honest, it’s not Helm that I’m interested in here.