Born At The Wrong Time

I may not have been as bowled over by Inception as most everyone else but I was still happy to applaud Warner Bros for putting money into something that was certainly different and a bit more intelligent than the usual pap spewed onto cinema screens. And since it was well–received by both the public and critics – when so many movies are lucky to get even the slightest approval from either – made a good bit of money, and is finding its way into annual award categories, you’d think that those studio executives with the wherewithal to green light projects would have figured out that making films that are new and different could be the way to go.

If they did mull it over during an odd moment between the usual hours of self–loathing the idea obviously didn’t stick, because the boobs at the studio have kicked off this new year by announcing a remake of A Star is Born, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring some singer called Beyoncé. At this point WTF? was reconfigured from “What The Fuck?” to “Why The Fuck?” I mean, really, why? It was only a few months back, appearing on BBC2’s The Culture Show to celebrating the 50th anniversary of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, that Martin Scorsese related the tale of seeing the film in a screening room on the Warner’s lot in the company of the Vice-President of the studio who was thinking of remarking it. After the credits rolled and the lights came up the VP, who like Scorsese was watching it for the first time, declared, “Can’t top that!” and dropped the idea.


Since this is further proof that the studio executives back in the mid–1970s had brains, while the current crop appear to have shit for brains, maybe they should take an afternoon off and head to that same screening room to watch a print of George Cukor’s 1954 classic starring Judy Garland and James Mason called up from the vaults. That way it should soon become clear that they shouldn’t waste the studio’s time and money and actually make something new instead. After all, we already had a remake of A Star is Born in 1976 (which might discount the theory that every studio head had their head screwed on back then), this time shifting the story from the film industry to the music business and featuring Barbra Streisand as the young singer whose career is on the ascendancy, falling for Kris Kristofferson’s long established, self–destructive, star who is in decline.

Questioning the reasoning behind this prospective new version isn’t simply about having an axe to grind with remakes. After all, Cukor’s version was in fact a remake of a 1937 film, produced by David O. Selznick and starring Janet Gaynor as Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester and Fredric March as the older, alcoholic, Norman Maine. And just to queer matters further, the William A. Wellman–directed original was so similar is terms of plot to the earlier What Price Hollywood? – also directed by Cukor and co–produced by Selznick – that RKO even contemplated filing a suit for plagiarism against Selznick International Pictures when this new film was released.

Almost a year ago, Brian Sibley kicked off an intriguing discussion regarding which film incarnation of various literary characters people preferred as every generation gets their own particular take on the famous creations of Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen and Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Lewis Carroll. There was also Alexandre Dumas’ Musketeers to consider and even Conan Doyle’s legendary detective, especially since we had just had Guy Ritchie’s latest cinematic version of Holmes and Watson, with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ extraordinary contemporary take still waiting in the wings. Even if we don’t always accept the new versions, staying rooted to our favourites, there’s always something intriguing as to how the latest interpretation will play out.


Remakes, though, are a different matter, especially when they miss the point of the original. The remake of The Italian Job might have kept the minis racing off with the gold, but without the wit and sheer anarchy of Troy Kennedy Martin’s original that threw an almighty “Fuck you!” to the European Economic Community, which Great Britain was soon to join, the film was a run–of–the–mill caper movie filled with bland characters. But then the most revered film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart as private eye Sam Spade and written and directed by the great John Huston, was the third take on Dashiell Hammett’s novel. Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday was the second film based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s Broadway comedy The Front Page and has never been bettered, not even by Billy Wilder with his 1974 version.

After blotting their copybook with a wholly unnecessary remake of Alexander Mackendrick’s Ealing Studios classic, The Ladykillers, the Coen brothers have currently found critical acclaim with their new version of True Grit. The rationale behind the project was not to remake the film but to produce a more faithful adaptation of Charles Portis’ novel, focusing more on young Mattie Ross seeking revenge for the death of her father. So maybe the unwritten rule studios should adhere to is to only remake a film if they and everyone involved has a valid reason for doing it and can actually improve on the previous version. Now that would be something original!