“You can’t eat the Venetian blinds…I just had ’em installed on Wednesday.”

Deadline‘s Justin Kroll, filed at 1:40 pm: “After earning some of the best reviews of his acting career for The Way Back, Ben Affleck is ready to make his return behind the camera, and he looks to have zeroed in on his next directing job. We are hearing that Affleck has signed on to direct The Big Goodbye for Paramount, an adaptation of the Sam Wasson book “The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood.”

“Affleck also would write the script. SNL’s Lorne Michaels pursued the rights to the book and brought it to the studio and will produce along with Affleck.

“The novel tells the behind-the-scenes story of the 1974 film noir classic starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. From Roman Polanski’s directing and Robert Towne’s Oscar-winning script to the twist ending that shook filmgoers to their core, Chinatown joined the long list of films to make their mark during the 1970s. Looming over the story of the classic movie is the imminent eclipse of the ’70s filmmaker-friendly studios as they gave way to the corporate Hollywood we know today.”

Idle HE thought #1: Neat idea and a potentially a great emotional movie, but who plays Jack Nicholson? I’ll tell you who plays Nicholson. No one, that’s who. Idle HE thought #2: I thought Roman Polanski was persona non grata these days, even retroactively. It will be a tough casting call for Affleck as whomever he hires to play Polanski may, I’m supposing, have a tough time politically with progressive industry women. At the very least the Polanski actor will get the slant-eye all over town.