The Idea (re)Cycle

Being the big, famous, rich writer that I am (a boy can dream), I often get asked why there are so many remakes in Hollywood. I then respond, "I don't know." After that, I am asked why remakes are so bad. To that, I simply say, "Um, see first answer." Pondering that question, I think the best thing is to go back to what William Goldman (a very famous novelist and screenwriter) so eloquently and famously stated: "nobody knows anything."

What I do know (or think I know) is that there are remakes for a bunch of different reasons. Name/brand recognition. A story was never told the way it could be when it was first made. Oh, and... MONEY!

Money, money, money. Yes, Lucas made his three "prequels" to Star Wars because he felt there was a story to tell, and he re-released the first Trilogy (with a capital "T" people, please) with all of the "exciting, new, amazing, better" (my sarcasm goes without saying) ideas. I don't know too many fans who were happy with the changes (or the new films), but I am sure Lucas and friends were happy with the money they made. Now, I am not saying that the only reason to do remakes is for money; often, filmmakers really do want to make a good movie. Some succeed (David Cronenberg's THE FLY. Watch it, dammit!). Some don't (Gus van Sant's PSYCHO. Insert that music for a WHOLE other, horrifying reason). Anyway, if you are going to remake a movie, do something different and exciting with it. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake is a good example. Wait. Do you hear that? It is Tobe Hooper (the director of the original) fanatics getting ready to come to my house with torches and pitchforks. Get over it. I LOVE the original and I also LOVED the remake. Anyway, the remake was scary and fun and creepy. Best of all, it changed JUST enough so fans (old and new alike) didn't know exactly what might happen. Any movie that has people in the audience covering their eyes (I think I saw my writing partner cover a few times -- hee hee) is a winner in my book. (Let's also say that the in-the-dark/noise-only trailer was genius.) DAWN OF THE DEAD, too, was a fun, scary remake.

I will say, however, that there are some horror movies that I just don't see ever being remade. It isn't that they are great movies that shouldn't be touched, but I just don't see what would be done differently to make it that much better. I bring this up because someone told me that there was talk of redoing FRIDAY THE 13th... as a TV movie! Show me the way to the mob out to get me, grab me a torch and a pitchfork, and I'll go after the network myself. A TV movie? Of FRIDAY THE 13th? The other day on NPR I heard a story that PBS blurred out an animated ass in a cartoon because of censors. So, tell me again how you are going to decapitate Mrs. Voorhees and get away with that!? (That was a spoiler. Sorry. But, really folks, if you haven't seen FRIDAY THE 13th by now, you're hopeless.)

A Small sampling of horror movies I like that should never, ever, never be remade:

--FRIDAY THE 13th (see above)
--A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (how can you remake Freddy Krueger?)
--HALLOWEEN (if this is ever remade, hell will freeze over and I will be really, really pissed)
--THE HOWLING (make whatever werewolf movies you want, but don't touch this gem)
--POLTERGEIST (one of the best haunted house movies. Ever. Period. Also, "directed" by Tobe Hooper. Look up the story of Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg. Fascinating.)

I think the following question begs to be asked: why not remake BAD movies and make them better, instead of remaking already good movies? Well, does anyone want to see a redux of, say, SQUIRM (a killer worm movie and no, even SciFi Channel hasn't done this... yet) or maybe THE HAUNTING? Most people are going say the latter, simply because they either saw it as an original and liked it, have heard about it, or want to see it but "don't like black and white movies." Ok, fine, let's remake THE HAUNTING. With an all-star cast. And cool special effects. And, yes, gobs of CGI. Yay! It's done!

Um, where is the audience?

Yeah, they saw the trailer and decided to... say it with me... rent SQUIRM.

The bottom line is no amount of star power, or the fact that the staircase can look at you and then try to eat you, will ever replace mood, atmosphere, and (ta-da!) the imagination. (If you want an example of imagination, watch the scene in the TV remake of SALEMS LOT where Rob Lowe is in jail being terrorized by a vampire. The vampire vows to kill him and claims to be squeezing through the vent to get him. You only hear it, but it is abso-freaking-lutley terrifying -- until they show it! Then it's a silly mess of CGI squishiness. A terrifying scene messed up by a visual when it should have stayed in the imagination. But, let me tell you, what I pictured as I heard it scared the hell out of me).

So, there are good remakes and bad remakes. They might be your thing and they might not.

Okay, enough about remakes, for now. Yeah, I lied. I am excited about THE AMITYVILLE HOROR. The original is a good ghost story. And KING KONG. Duh, it's Peter Jackson. And THE BLOB. Already remade, yes. And a great remake (watch it, dammit!). But, it is the type of story that could be told again.

It'll be interesting to see what they do with those films. Only time -- and an audience -- will tell.

Maybe it's time for us to write a remake.

Now, please...

--"Gimme some sugar, baby!"
ARMY OF DARKNESS