Since everyone's making "little friend" jokes anyway, Brian DePalma will direct Al Pacino's Joe Paterno movie

As we learned in September, then quickly ignored to concentrate on football season, Al Pacino had been hired to play the late Penn State coach Joe Paterno, bringing the same actorly hoo-ah to another man mired in scandal that he has to controversial figures like Jack Kevorkian and Phil Spector. And because everyone (Including us! Because we are dignified!) immediately set to making “Say hello to my little friend” jokes, its creators decided they may as well go ahead and hire Scarface director Brian DePalma, just as they decided they may as well run with the suggestive title of Happy Valley, just to get it all out there. Producer Edward R. Pressman references both Scarface and the duo’s last reunion on Carlito’s Way in characterizing their appropriateness for the project, drawing a parallel to Paterno’s sort-of-similar story of an empire undone by “his own tragic flaw” and friends he definitely could have done without. However, details are still being withheld on the specific slant of the film (though it will still be based on Joe Posnanski’s biography Paterno), as, after all, there are just some things you don’t want to hear about.