I seem to be spending a lot of time writing about Mr. Victor Gischler these days. Previously, we wrote about the sale of his nifty book Go-Go Girls of the Appocalype and the sale of his Pulp Boy screenplay (co-written by the very cool Anthony Neil Smith).
Now word comes that Ryûhei Kitamura has signed on to direct the film version of Vic’s Gun Monkeys.
Charlie Swift just pumped three .38-caliber bullets into a dead polar bear in his taxidermist girlfriend’s garage. But he’s a gun monkey, and no one can blame him for having an itchy trigger finger. Ever since he drove down the Florida Turnpike with a headless body in the trunk of a Chrysler, then took down four cops, Charlie’s been running hard through the sprawling sleaze of central Florida. And to make matters worse, he’s holding on to some crooked paperwork that a lot of people would like to take off his hands. Now, with his boss disappeared and his friends dropping like flies, Charlie has got his work cut out just to survive. If he wants to keep the money and get the girl too, he’s really going to have to go ape…
Ryûhei Kitamura most recently directed the film version of Clive Barker’s Midnight Meat Train. He previously directed the award-winning films Azumi and Aragami. He also wrote the screenplay for Godzilla: Final Wars.
I know very little about Mr. Kitamura, so I emailed a friend that likes horror and Sci-fi films. He was very impressed with Midnight Meat Train, Godzilla and Azumi, the three films he had seen, and praised his style.
Gun Monkeys was nominated for the Edgar for best First Novel and has one of the coolest opening lines in all of literature:
“I turned the Chrysler onto the Florida Turnpike with Rollo Kramer’s headless body in the trunk, and all the time I’m thinking I should’ve put some plastic down.”
The screeenplay was written by Lee Goldberg. Lee has worked in televion for over twenty-five years, both writing and producing for Monk, Diagnosis Murder, Sliders and Spenser: For Hire as well as another dozen plus others. Lee is also the author of various mystery novels as well as several non-fiction titles.
If this is done right, we should be in for some killer pulpy goodness!
