Gas Station Boudin

We — those of us whose cultish adoration and devotion to the book would probably lead to us being institutionalized in less forgiving times and places — need you to do us a favor. There’s a reason this incredible book is the rare decades-old international bestseller that’s never been made into a movie: it’s about an extraordinary person placed in extraordinary situations. And, as Harold Ramis –who himself attempted to produce a Dunces adaptation starring John Belushi — noted, such a thing is a violation of the “basic bylaws of movie comedy,” which posit that for a movie to be funny it has to involve a normal person placed in an extraordinary situation or an extraordinary person placed in a normal situation.

So, in order for a Dunces movie to ever succeed, two things are probably necessary: a perfect script and the perfect actor to play Ignatius. Presumably, a perfect script, or at least the outline for one, has already been created. Still, the movie can’t happen without your participation because there’s simply no one else out there right now who can pull off Ignatius. (Some have even suggested that it’s a role you were born to play, and I tend to agree with them.) Yes, whether you know it or not, you’re the only person with the comedic acting chops who looks the part AND can put seats in movie theaters on opening weekend with your name attached to the project, and it’ll be years before someone else comes along who fits the same criteria.

Conversely, because you’re the only person who can play Ignatius, you single-handedly possess the power to stop this movie dead in its tracks. I trust in your sensibilities enough that you’ll know if this thing is on course to be something great (I look forward to watching it with a big bucket of popcorn at the Prytania, just as Ignatius would, if so) or become the next The Scarlet Letter or something. And if that is indeed the case, I, we, ask this of you: kill it, and kill it with fucking fire.