Indie returns?

Who needed drugs back in 1970 when there were peyote-powered brain bogglers like Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell’s Performance, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo and Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Started Small on the screen? Those psychedelic, boundary breaking days might be coming back despite the perpetual complaints about the death of independent cinema.

Well, Cammell may be dead and Roeg perhaps is still awaiting resuscitation -- his 2007 film “Puffball” lived up to its title in terms of distribution, though a remake of his 1973 masterpiece “Don’t Look Now” has been in the works since 2005 and has a 2009 release date.  

But more to the point is the collaboration of Jodorowsky and Herzog  -- and David Lynch! It’s a three headed monster reminiscent of the surreal triptych prowling the desert of “El Topo.” For their project “King Shot,”  described as a “metaphysical gangster movie…with enough sex and violence to guarantee an NC-17 rating,” this Dream (or perhaps more accurately, “Nightmare”) Team has cast Nick Nolte, Marilyn Manson, Asia Argento and Udo Kier. What, no Crispin Glover?

Herzog, meanwhile, has other projects keeping him busy. Another collaboration with Lynch called “My Son, My Son” is based on a real story about a man who’s read too much Sophocles and kills his mother with a sword. And you thought video games caused criminal behavior -- it’s about time we had a ban on Greek tragedy! Plus he plans a remake of Abel Ferrara’s “Bad Lieutenant” starring Nicolas Cage. Because Ferrara’s version was just too namby-pamby.

Meanwhile, I also look forward to the possibility that David Cronenberg might be directing the English language remake of "Timecrimes" -- the original by Spanish dirrector Nacho Vigalondo, shown at the Boston Independent Film Festival,  was already terrific. And to the adaptation of Philip K.Dick’s “Ubik,” planned by the Celluloid Dreams company. Or another production company called Halcyon that not only signed up Christian Bale to star in a new “Terminator” trilogy but also bought up the rest of Dick’s novels for adaptations. Pass the psilocybin! The next thing you know I’ll be able to take my canary yellow bell bottoms out of the closet and be in style again.