Oh, Hellboy, Vincent, or whatever character you prefer Ron Perlman has. The man has done about a billion different shows, movies, and parts, and if you look at his IMDb page, there's a sea of upcoming production red -- a whopping 17 gigs coming our way. I can't complain -- I really dig the man. And now, we're getting more; he's adding an indie film to make it 18.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Perlman is teaming up with Taryn Manning, Joe Pantoliano, and Patrick Flueger to bring Shem Bitterman's 1998 play, The Job, to the big screen. The dark comedy focuses on "a hapless man named Bubba (Flueger) who is desperate to find a job and marry the woman he loves (Manning). A drifter (Perlman) hooks him up with a slick employment agent (Pantoliano), but after agreeing to the job, Bubba finds that he is in over his head."

That sounds like a crappy employment agent to me -- or, is this over-the-head gig something more unsavory, rather than just difficult? Production on the indie has started today in Detroit, so we should be able to see it soon enough. Have any of you out there ever seen the play? Do you think it's movie-worthy?

Filmed in the summer of 2004, The Amateurs has been in the can for over three years. The movie's title has gone through several changes, and imdb still lists it as The Moguls. The film has had a whopping six release dates going back to 2005, but it finally sputters into theaters today -- in Los Angeles and Dallas, anyway. Movies often have distribution trouble (you can read more about the problems this one faced in the Los Angeles Times), but the struggle of The Amateurs surprised me because it had all the makings of a sleeper hit. It's got a killer premise (think The Full Monty with porno) and an amazing cast. The film's struggle surprised me...until I saw it.

A queasy mixture of Boogie Nights sleaze and Patch Adams sentimentality, The Amateurs takes place in the small town of Butterface Fields (ho-HO!). That's where you'll find Andy Sargentee (Jeff Bridges, in shaggy dog Lebowski mode), a divorced dad who is down on his luck. His son (Alex D. Linz) is now living with a wealthy stepfather (the typically solid Steven Weber), and this makes Sargentee insecure. He's got to make some money, and fast. So, naturally, he decides to enlist the help of his friends and make an amateur porno flick.