According to Deadline, writer/producer James Sclafani is currently shopping a feature film script based on the life of performance artist Rush Limbaugh, whose delightfully whimsical musings on world affairs (like the recent supposition that “hardcore enviromentalist wackos” are to blame for the Gulf oil spill) have long provided Americans a much-needed distraction from the burden of rational thinking.
Sclafani’s screenplay is said to be based on Paul Colford’s unauthorized biography The Rush Limbaugh Story: Talent On Loan From God, and is described as a “close cousin” of Oliver Stone’s W., in that it delves deeply into the “ambition and demons that drove Limbaugh’s success.” Naturally, it will also examine some of the hypocrisy-exposing contradictions that have made him such a laugh riot over the years, including his own dubious 4-F draft status during Vietnam and that time he was busted for addiction to illegal painkillers despite his get-tough stance on drug abusers. Sclafani expanded further on his vision of the film for Deadline:
"This is Citizen Kane meets Private Parts, where you have a man who always had trouble relating to people in the outside world, but does it effortlessly in the booth," said Sclafani, adding that Limbaugh is the proverbial fat kid, ignored in high school, and determined to prove everyone they were wrong about him. "There's this anecdote about a game of spin the bottle in high school. The bottle pointed at him, and the pretty girl who was supposed to kiss him ran away, and that stayed with him," Sclafani said. "When he came up in radio, he was culturally opposed to everything happening in the ’60s and ’70s, and all this left him with something to prove. He is an underdog, and became an extremely determined person with something to prove."
Limbaugh, of course, is not involved with the film, but Sclafani says he will approach him “when the time is right,” like those torpid evening hours where he's luxuriating like a fatted, self-satisfied tick after he's done feeding off the ignorance of the populace for the day.