The good bit is that the script is coming from "American Splendor" writer/directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. "Splendor" is just about as fine as biopics come and perfectly balances fact with story.

The bad news is that Tom Shadyac -- director of "The Nutty Professor", "Ace Ventura" and two films with "Almighty" at the end -- is taking the director's chair on this one.

Sam Kinison, for those that haven't experienced his unique blend of angry, angry comedy, was pretty popular throughout the late eighties and early nineties but met with a tragic end in 1992 when his car collided with another in California.

The book was released two years later and has thoughts of a film version have been toyed with ever since. Now it's HBO -- the channel that helped launch Kinison to fame -- that will produce the project and have signed on Dan Folger to play Sam. He certainly looks the part, though his credits are mostly mediocre second banana roles.

So we've got great writers, a "meh" star and a terrible director. Though, to be fair, Kinison prided himself on being loud and obnoxious. If it weren't for the fact that Kinison was usually pretty funny, too, I'd say that maybe Shadyac's perfect.