It’ll Be a ‘Fiasco’ for Samuel Bayer

According to THR, music video and commercial director Samuel Bayer is set to direct Fiasco Heights, which has been compared to the cinematic likings of Sin CIty. The pic is a film noir/action thriller featuring a gunman who returns to the crime-ridden Fiasco Heights in search of a femme fatale beauty and a mysterious briefcase. Universal will be financing the pic.

Bayer hit it big with his first music video in 1991, the iconic and immortal icon of grunge rock in the early 90s, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”  According to Bayer, he landed that lucky first shot at directing because his test reel was so bad.  It must not have been that bad, because he’s been on a steady ride since, directing mostly grunge and rock videos like Blind Melon’s “No Rain,” The Cranberries’ “Zombie,” The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” and Green Day’s “American Idiot.” Bayer most recently directed the music video for Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around…Comes Around” (the one where ScarJo gets in a car crash for cheating on JT).

Perhaps making a permanent switch from music videos to features, Bayer has two other film projects in development.  Near Dark is a remake of the 1987 film by Kathryn Bigelow, in which a young man joins a traveling family of vampires.  The helmer is also set to direct another remake; a version of the 1971 pic Vanishing Point, about one man’s bet that he could drive from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours.

Fiasco Heights is set for release some time in 2009.