Deadline‘s Anita Busch and Mike Fleming have tapped out a piece about Midnight Rider director Randall Miller trying to get back to work. He’s been quietly assembling a similar-type film called Slick Rock Trail. The Deadline guys are calling it a drama about “a washed up, hopeless long-haired old rocker with addiction problems who shaves his head and drives to Utah in an effort to tie up loose ends in his personal life before he dies” but “in the process ends up helping out a fledgling blues band called The Drainpipes.” Which sounds to me like Tender Mercies — a forgiveness and redemption story. Obviously Miller wants to move on and maybe earn some degree of forgiveness in his own life. The Busch/Fleming implication is that Miller shouldn’t be doing anything except throwing himself on the church steps, submitting to lashings, eating bitter herbs and living a life of penance. I don’t have Busch’s email but I just wrote Fleming the following: “Mike, Miller’s carelessness cost the life of a crew person — a huge, horrible mistake — but does that mean he has to stop all work and put on monk’s robes and go into a fetal-tuck position and drown himself?”