“More fun than going to the movies.”
Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Word reaches me from the ever-excellent Slashfilm that Sam Mendes has been confirmed as the director of a movie version of Preacher, the comic book series created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Fabry.
I have most of the original issues. They came out while I was at University in Edinburgh. Each month I’d picked one up from the comic store I used to hang out in called Deadhead Comics, then go back to the flat, have a smoke, and settle in for half an hour of comatose peace and irreverent quiet.
Preacher’s pure pulp as far as I’m concerned, full of angry sex, gratuitous violence and disorganised religion. It has a kind of faux profundity, search for meaning in the most meaningless of situations, weaving in strands of narrative contrived to do nothing more than indulge the lascivious and unruly impulses of its creators, with which the curiosity of the reader may occasionally coincide.
It might not be the loftiest of subject matter, but it’s jammed with detail, spontaneous surges of character development and entirely arbitrary interruptions offering nothing of the continuity expected by your average cinema-goer. Mendes will have to go to work on it with a Holy Bible and a pair of pliers if he wants to turn it into a big screen success doing even a shred of justice to the original subject matter.
If I had to call this now, I’d call turkey, but it’s early doors. Guess I’ll just reacquaint myself with the subject matter and see who Mendes casts as Jesse Custer.
If it was up to me, based on the talent that’s out there at the moment, I might be thinking about a certain Matthew McConaughey. There’s something about him that might work in the role. Probably the fact that he comes across as a bit of a cocksure wanker.
Unfortunately I don’t imagine Steve Zahn can do much of an Irish accent, otherwise I might think about offering him Cassidy and getting a piece of the chemistry that made Sahara into a strangely watchable little movie.
“More fun than going to the movies.” That’s how Kevin Smith described the first of the Preacher books, Gone To Texas. He was probably right.
