Chuck Klosterman has always been the writer darling of pop-culture-obsessives, tackling topics like The Real World and pop music in essay collections like Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, which was ubiquitous in nearly every dorm room while I was in college.
It's surprising, then, that it's taken this long for Klosterman's writing to make it to the screen. According to THR Klosterman's memoir Fargo Rock City will be adapted into a film by the strange pair of Tom Ruprecht, a former writer for Letterman, and Craig Finn, lead singer of the rock band the Hold Steady. Klosterman's book chronicles his coming-of-age in 1980s North Dakota, at a high school where he was the only kid who liked heavy metal. The screenplay version, naturally, will focus on a group of friends, but pretty much with the same geeky interests.
“Seventeen or eighteen is the perfect age for characters in a movie like this, because it’s at that age that you have drivers licenses and a certain amount of independence, but you’re still young enough that you can totally make terrible decisions," Finn told THR. Ruprecht added that, while heavy metal will be part of the story, "this will also be a universal story of dorky kids trying to be cool.”
The story of dorky kids trying to be cool has been done over and over again countless times by now, of course, which means everyone involved will have to work hard to make this something as original as Klosterman's own story. But they've got that distinctive voice behind them, and Klosterman will be helping make the movie as a producer. Make those North Dakota kids proud.
