A long ways down the road is The Long Play, a movie driven by the re-teaming of Martin Scorsese and Departed screen- writer William Monahan. Paramount Pictures is funding the development of the script, which reportedly follows two guys “through 40 years in the music business, from the early days of R&B to contemporary hip-hop.”

What’s that…the late ’50s to the late ’90s? No way…no way in hell. Two friends getting older, grayer and fatter as the years roll on and the music gets shittier? The evolution of great pop music from the early ’60s to the present (which would obviously be seen as a history of the changes in U.S. culture from the time of late Eisenhower/early Kennedy to post 9/11 George Bush) it its own epic. A six-hour documentary would have trouble making sense of it. A single narrative 120 or 140-minute drama can’t hope to capture or encompass such a saga.

The Long Play is a good title, though.

Monahan is also working with Leonardo DiCaprio on an adaptation of a late ’06 Hong Kong thriller called Confessions of Pain, with Warner Bros. cutting the checks. The IMDB says the Hong Kong original is about a detective helping a friend to investigate the mysterious death of his father.”