Paul Dano to Play Struggling Indie Rocker in ‘For Ellen’

Don’t know about you, but my first thought upon watching Paul Dano’s performance as an angsty teenager who has taken a vow of silence in Little Miss Sunshine was “Okay, that guy would make a better Elliott Smith than Zach Braff.” (Don’t worry, that Braff rumor never panned out. Phew.) Well, Dano won’t be playing Smith anytime soon, but he will be following lauded supporting performances in There Will Be Blood and Where The Wild Things Are with the lead role as a struggling indie rocker in For Ellen, reports Variety.

Dano will be directed by So Yong Kim, who also wrote the script about Dano’s character “nearly wrecking his car during an overnight long-distance drive, [en route to] a small Midwestern town to deal with his impending divorce.”

Jon Heder is signed on to co-star in the flick, but if these guys were really serious about making this movie “indie rock,” they should’ve tapped Arcade Fire’s resident Napoleon Dynamite, Richard Reed Parry, right? No no, he has a more important project to wrap up.