Remakes

Remakes are a big thing in Hollywood these days.  It seems Hollywood is so risk averse that they must have some guarantee of success in place before greenlighting a movie.  It used to be putting a popular actor in the lead role(s).  But that is no longer enough.  Now it is also putting a popular intellectual property in the title...popular novel, comic book, video game and board game properties...sequels, and of course, remakes.  These all contain the prerequisite known title entity so that when an audience sees the movie advertised, they are familiar with the property already, and MAY be more enticed to spend their hard earned money.  Transformers, The Da Vinci Code, the Harry Potter and Pirates films with their seemingly never ending sequels, are the most popular of these remakes.  But the top of the pyramid is small...the bottom makes up failed trash remakes like The Stepford Wives, Poseidon, The Wolfman, Arthur, Bewitched, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Hitcher, The Omen and on and on.

I feel like remakes are different somehow.  Especially remakes of films that already worked.  Take the upcoming Poltergeist remake. The original Poltergeist was one of the few horror movies from the 80s that had high production values, fantastic acting, was genuinely terrifying, haunting and filled with a slew of iconic moments with one of Jerry Goldsmith's best scores. Everyone brought their A-game and Steven Spielberg pretty much ghost directed the movie. Do the filmmakers even care that there is virtually zero chance they will improve upon the original?  But it's not about that...they know they can't.  It is part of the Hollywood meatgrinder.  It is about box office.  Hollywood doesn't want to risk a bomb by taking a chance on something original...if the film bombs, they at least want to keep their jobs by pointing to the fact that they did their best to insure the movie's success.  Executives who take chances on original material only have their own integrity and taste to fall back on in case of failure...and in Hollywood, that's not enough.  The shareholders to these huge conglomerates that own the studio don't care about integrity or taste, they care about the stock.  The stock must stay up, at all costs.

Anyway, I got to thinking about an interesting parallel the other day.  The music album.  There are great, classic albums that sell alot.  And people love them.  But the record companies don't remake classic albums.  There are cover bands that do cover songs, but those aren't really taken seriously.  The original is a historical document.  Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' is like the Mount Rushmore of music albums...and nobody is going to fuck with Mount Rushmore.  Labels don't remake albums because albums are made by artists with a singular vision.

You could argue that people don't go to see movies for one element; one person with a singular vision...they go for several different elements...the actors, the story, the visual FX and eye candy, the director, the writer, etc.  But classic movies are classics...they are official records of the successful execution of that work of art.  Casablanca or E.T. are not very much different than Michael's Jackson's Thriller.  They are both beloved by millions of people.  The record industry is not going to remake Thriller because only Michael Jackson could do that record.  But Hollywood WILL remake Casablanca.  I heard Madonna wants to remake it.  And there is supposedly a remake on the Hollywood books without her.  But would Madonna want to re-do a classic Joni Mitchell or Janis Joplin album?  Of course not.  But why not?  Couldn't you just get somebody who SOUNDS like Joni or Janis, just like you can get someone who acts like Bogart and Becall?  There are plenty of musical imitators floating around on youtube.  Madonna could produce the record, get a Janis or Joni sound alike and BAM!  Another hit right?  But the public most likely wouldn't stand for it...they'd probably call Madonna and the record label lots of nasty names for even thinking of doing it.  But the public wouldn't care if they remade Casablanca.  Some would...those who love the classic, but most people wouldn't give a rats ass.  Remakes are standard anyway right?  Hollywood uses this loophole of apathy from the public to continue the remake trend.  And as long as the public continues to open their wallets and purses to these remakes, Hollywood will continue to supply the demand.

Why aren't classic movies, or hell, even just movies that were pretty good...why aren't they left alone like the great albums?  These are official documents of an artistic achievement.  Some of these movies are even entered into the library of congress!  The record industry wouldn't dream of screwing around with something like Thriller, or The White Album, or The Dark Side of the Moon.  But Hollywood doesn't think twice about assimilating classics like Casablanca, Poltergeist, Annie, Robocop, The Birds, The Wild Bunch and My Fair Lady.

They don't care about movies.  Movies are not official documents of an artistic achievement...they are intellectual properties, there to be milked for all their worth.  I would be more sympathetic to Hollywood if original ideas didn't exist.  If there were only a few dozen properties that could ever be made into movies, they'd have nothing but well wishes from me.  But there are COUNTLESS stories and COUNTLESS ways of expressing them.  The highest grossing movie of all time is not a remake, adaptation or sequel!  It is an original property...James Cameron's 'Avatar'.  And while that film contains certain elements taken from classic literature and other films, the execution is wholly unique, and it does not use the name of another intellectual property to sell tickets.

But this speaks to the main problem.  Hollywood doesn't trust its artists.  Filmmakers are no longer in charge.  Studios spend too much money to entrust their properties to the guys who actually make them!  It's like a stock broker hiring an architect to build him a house, and then second guessing his every move, and eventually meddling so much that the house ends up looking like a cross between something a stock broker would design and something a genuine professional in his field would design...in other words, an abomination.  If you know nothing about pipes and drainage, you don't hire a plumber and then start telling him how to do his job.  Why should this be any different in Hollywood?  Because insanity runs rampant there.  You have executives who are too chicken shit to risk their jobs on original films, and then try to tell the filmmakers how to make a movie....watching lots of movies does not make you a filmmaker capable of making hits.  If that were true, my father would be qualified to make hit movies.  He's not.  He's a businessman and he sticks to what he knows.