In an awesome fusion of television, literature and music, pop culture writer Chuck Klosterman’s memoir will be hitting the big screen.
Klosterman, author of the best-seller Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, was born in Minnesota but raised on a farm in North Dakota. His youth as a fan of heavy metal in a small, rural town provided the inspiration for his 2001 memoir Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota.
Such a story by such an author seems like something it wouldn’t take Hollywood too long to grab hold of, and sure enough it has. The rights to Fargo Rock City were recently bought, and is in the works to get turned into a screen adaptation by an unlikely pairing.
Tom Ruprecht, a writer for The Late Show With David Letterman, and Craig Finn, frontman for the band The Hold Steady, have acquired the rights to Fargo Rock City, and will be writing and producing the film. Klosterman will also serve as one of the film’s producers.
The film will be a coming-of-age story taking place in the 80s, and following a group of nerdy high school seniors as they try to get women and break out of their shells before graduation.
Fargo Rock City won’t be an exact adaptation of the memoir, but will instead lock in on sections of the book. Music will also play a less dominant role than it does in the original writing.
Ruprecht and Finn are still working on getting a script drafted, but hope to be able to present it to receive financing from studio and third-party sources when it’s finished.
Based solely on the writing talent involved, Fargo Rock City has the potential to be a great book to film translation. Kosterman’s published work provides excellent quality material to play around with, and both Ruprecht and Finn are familiar with the writing process.
Although their writing backgrounds are different–one for a TV show and the other a songwriter–Ruprecht and Finn should be able to mesh their respective abilities quite well to make for a polished script.
