Boardwalk Empire star Michael Pitt is gearing up to pull triple duty on a feature film adaptation of Jack Black’s 1926 autobiographical novel You Can’t Win.  Variety reports that Robinson Devor (Zoo) will direct the pic from a script he co-wrote with Pitt, who will also produce.  The best-selling novel takes place in the hobo underworld and follows Black’s experiences around the Wild West and Canada, covering topics like crime, addiction, criminal justice, and human folly.  Pitt hasn’t appeared on the big screen since 2008’s Funny Games, but it looks as if he’s planning a big return.  No word on how soon production might begin.  Hit the jump to read a synopsis for the book.

Here’s a synopsis for You Can’t Win:

My background is crowded with robberies, burglaries, and thefts too numerous to recall. All manner of crimes against property. Arrests, trials, acquittals, convictions, escapes. Penitentiaries! I see in the background four of them. County jails, workhouses, city prisons, Mounted Police barracks, dungeons, solitary confinement, bread and water, hanging up, brutal floggings, and the murderous straitjacket. I see hop joints, wine dumps, thieves' resorts, and beggars' hangouts. Crime followed by swift retribution in one form or another. I had very few glasses of wine as I traveled this route. I rarely saw a woman smile and seldom heard a song. In those twenty-five years I took all these things, and I am going to write about them. And I am going to write about them as I took them - with a smile. [Amazon]