Cloning Creativity

The sun is high in the sky and the days are long, kids are out of school and people are gassing up their cars for Memorial Day, can the summer of dreadful remakes be far behind?

We’ve seen remakes every summer for a dozen years, its what passes for creativity in this age without the studios. Oh I know, The Studios were horrible, creativity stifling monsters and all they ever did was hold back talent and push box office receipts at the expense of art…excuse me ART.

Probably why we have Weekend at Bernie’s II and Ocean’s Eleven and they had, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Inherit the Wind, Father of the Bride, (The adult version with the incomparable Spencer Tracy.), Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Rio Lobo, but wait those last, they were remakes, at least El Dorado and Rio Lobo.

They were, Howard Hawks quest to tell the same story, a lone man facing overwhelming odds, without any support and finding a way to win. And they were all good. Now there are good sequels the Die Hard series features three and the James Bond series has the Daniel Craig entries, we’ll skip right over the George Lanzenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan mistakes, and way back in the dawn of time before he became an ARTIST and a racist Mel Gibson and Danny Glover made three good sequels.

But when it comes to remakes we aren’t so favored: The Wild, Wild West had potential, Kenneth Branagh’s Dr. Loveless was magically over the top, Maverick managed to find the spirit of the original in spite of Mel Gibson, (Jodie Foster and James Garner might have had something to do with it.), and Steve Martin’s Roxanne, filmed before he started over-reaching his talent, (Really Steve, Clifton Webb maybe, but Tracy? Don’t be silly. And who couldn’t manage to be heroic if the prize was Daryl Hannah?), but the rest…pitiful. pitiful, pitiful.

The original Ocean’s Eleven was a joy to watch with a MacgGuffin that made the two hours of Dean, Sammy, Joey. Peter and Frank even better, The Avengers, one of the most stylish programs ever to air was reduced to drivel and had to lean on the powers of Sean the Magnificent to try and pull it out of the muck, and the prospect of John Travolta trying to match Robert Shaw’s under-played masterpiece is chilling. (Fortunately John won’t be alone, Keanu Reeves stepped into Michael Rennie’s shoes and stumbled through a remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still.)

Why do good actors go so wrong? They have no direction, no guidance and no backstop. Now in some cases, George Clooney, the actor can manage his won career selecting projects which are both entertaining and satisfying, but not all of the time Ocean’s Eleven wasn’t the worst of a bad lot but it missed the joke. Why introduce Bruce Willis as himself and not use that as a MacGuffin? Because no one really understood the original Ocean’s, it’s okay Frank you’re still the Chairman of the Board.

And the truth of it is you can make a good remake. If you love the material, respect the source and cast carefully.

You have to love the material. You can’t disrespect the original and expect the good folks who know the story to come and clap. Maybe Dashiell Hammet isn’t undying literature, (I completely disagree), but you can bet your sweet ass there are people who think so.

You have to respect the source. I know all of the English instructors groan every time they hear, “Where no man has gone before”, get over it grammarian. There are two things we know about Star Trek and they’ve been repeated since the very first moment Gene Roddenberry invited us into his universe, “These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise”, and Vulcans are the good guys. Wanna know why Enterprise the series went down in flames, even with Jolene Blalock making every red-blooded Academy cadet dream of space travel? Vulcans were bad or at least untrustworthy. Not in Roddenberry’s galaxy.

And finally you have to cast carefully. I know that Murphy is a blond. Com-on, The Dresden Files, I can’t make an argument if you don’t try to keep up, but Valerie Cruz did such a great job I have to admit it takes a coupla paragraphs to shake the Latina out of Murphy’s style. However, Paul Blackthorne as Harry and Terrance Mann as Bob the skull will be with me forever. They fit Jim Butcher’s descriptions to a T. And what about Casablanca with Ronald Regan and Bette Davis, who wants to look at you, kid? The source material is the final judge on any casting decision.

And just in case you think I’ve given up hope, you’re wrong. In the long film history of Treasure Island three distinguished actors played Long John Silver, two before and one after Disney and they failed. Now if Wallace Berry, Orson Wells and Charlton Heston can’t get it right who can? In the third remake, after Berry and Wells and before Heston an obscure English actor forever changed the way we look at and hear pirates. Robert Newton, doing a Cayman Island accent made Long John live and created the “Long John Silver” effect. When a character has such a good time being bad we don’t really want him caught! It’s better that Silver sail away and spend the rest of his days in the arms of a dusky Negress drinking Jamaican Rum on some distant island.

And what about the Maltese Falcon, you know that the Bogie/Houston version was number three? Sure Bogie is Sam Spade and you can only be as heroic as your villain permits and with Sidney Greenstreet as Caspar Gutman you could be pretty heroic. (Greestreet plays Gutman with such style that Houston made the only change from the book, he lets Gutman get away.)

And the remake champion of all time, The Prisoner of Zenda. It’s been remade so many times I’ve lost count, there’s the Thirties version with a perfectly heroic Ronald Coleman, a young David Niven, a dashing Sir Doug, a loathsome Raymond Massey, Mary Astor as the Girl and the most stalwart of companions, C Aubrey Smith, damn which way to the battlements we can take it with one more charge! Then there’s the Stewart Granger lace shirt remake, the Peter Sellers confused and dazed remake, the two prequels to the Coleman version and a handful of semi-remakes like Moon Over Parador and Dave.

Remakes can be done with style and verve so long as the maker treats them with complete respect. George Clooney, are you listening, instead of making bad Ocean’s films why not do a remake right? Do It Takes A Thief, you’re the closest thing we have to Cary Grant or how about Banacek, the turtle-necked Polish vulture could use another go ‘round even with Tim Hutton’s Leverage stealing some of its thunder.

The Studio System knew when a property was hot enough to stand a remake. It’s time some of our auteurs found their way to discriminating between inspired imitation and cloned creativity