Sometime before the release of Undertow, news began to surface that David Gordon Green was now attached to direct an adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces from a screenplay written by Scott Kramer and Steven Soderbergh. Needless to say, despite having never read the book myself (it has been on my “to read” list for several years now but has been endlessly deferred by far more pressing issues) this news and assemblage of serious talents naturally piqued my interest.

A quick search for info produced a startlingly expansive background to this project stretching back over 25 years, starting prior to even the book’s publication in 1980 due to a fortunate turn of events that landed the then unpublished manuscript in the hands of Kramer. You can read all about it here. Personally I find the uncanny parallels between Toole’s difficulty in finding publication for his book and the film’s inability to get off the ground truly fascinating.

With Green on board the project took on an allure all its own independent of the source material. Whatever appeal subsisted in Toole’s novel would no longer be the subject of concern; rather the superimposition of Green’s style over the text would be of the utmost importance. Until now Green has worked largely outside the studio system but this project would entangle him in the middle of the fray. Not that I’d believe any of this would sway Green from his uncompromising vision, but for those who have seen many a great talent flounder at the first sign of mainstream success, the fear held some validity. However, us fans would never have that fear confirmed nor refuted since as soon as the project appeared on the brink of formation, it hit an insurmountable roadblock.

Last May in Roger Ebert’s Movie Answer Man column, Green said the following:

“To the disappointment of many of us, ‘Dunces’ was put on hold last year. We had assembled the cast of my dreams (Will Ferrell Lily Tomlin, Mos Def, Drew Barrymore, Olympia Dukakis, etc.) and I adopted New Orleans as my new home, but politics over the property rights — torn between Miramax, Paramount, and various camps of producers — put a weight on the project that wasn’t creatively healthy to work within.”

As of now, the listing for the film has been removed from Green’s oeuvre on the Internet Movie Database and, in fact, no longer appears in any form on the website, as if the project itself had been sucked into a blackhole from which there would be no return. The only glimmer of hope came once again from Roger Ebert’s website about a week ago in which Green now provides us with this news:

“The rights to A Confederacy of Dunces have been cleared at Paramount. The project is in development once again. The adaptation from the last effort has been put aside for legal reasons and a new one is in the works. I’m editing a film I just shot and hoping to begin putting more energy toward the potential of what I believe a proper production of that book might be. We’ll see.”

As of right now, this is the only news I’ve heard on the project’s current status.

Currently Green has three projects of his own in various degrees of development. Among the more unusual is the film Goat, which concerns a fraternity member struggling with a brutal attack inflicted upon him during the pledge process. As for Confederacy, given the slippery slope it has been doomed to descend for the last 25 years, chances are I’ll have finally had a chance to read the book before the film is even underway.