Those Who Can't Direct, Direct Remakes

A diverse pair of quotes provide the meat for this beef - both unintentionally cutting into moviemakers’ obsession with uncalled for remakes of timeless fare best left alone.

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world," according to Gandhi, "as in being able to remake ourselves." Not in Hollywood, Mahatma.

I’m reminded of a Woody Allen line from "Annie Hall": "Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, teach gym." I would add, "Those who can’t direct, direct remakes."

Makers of television movies have often been the culprits. In 1975 the ABC Movie of the Week presented "Returning Home," a cut-rate rehash of "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946), director William Wyler’s evocative examination of the post-war experiences of three WWII veterans. Starring Dabney Coleman and Tom Selleck, the TV series pilot mercilessly abridged Wyler’s three-hour emotional powerhouse to less than 90 minutes of commercial-riddled pap.

In 1948 Howard Hawks directed John Wayne, Montgomery Clift and Walter Brennan in "Red River," otherwise known as "Mutiny on the Bounty" on a cattle drive. Forty years later, James Arness, star of the long-running TV series "Gunsmoke" and longtime friend of Wayne’s (the Duke introduced the first episode of "Gunsmoke"), reprised Wayne’s role in the pallid television remake, with Bruce Boxleitner in the Montgomery Clift role and Ray Walston doing a plucky reprisal of Walter Brennan’s grizzled character.

Why anyone would dare remake "High Noon" remains an unsolved mystery. The 1952 western classic earned Gary Cooper his second (and last) Oscar as lone lawman Marshal Will Kane. It was injurious enough when bland-as-ricecake Lee Majors starred in the TV movie "High Noon Part II: The Return of Will Kane" in 1980, but in 2000 insult was added in a straightforward but soulless TV remake, starring Tom Skerritt and "Reservoir Dogs" loose cannon Michael Madsen. We’ve always liked Tom Skerritt, a figurehead of respect in a variety of roles, including "Alien," "Top Gun" and "A River Runs Through It." He won an Emmy award for the early 1990s series "Picket Fences," and heck, he was even in the original "MASH" movie, but when it came to filling Gary Cooper’s boots he only proved that no one should even try them on for size.

In 1979 George Axelrod, an acclaimed playwright ("The Seven Year Itch") and screenwriter ("Breakfast at Tiffany’s," "The Manchurian Candidate"), was offered a lot of money to script a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 thriller "The Lady Vanishes." When Axelrod asked the producers why they wanted to pay him so much, they responded, "Because we want it in color." The end result gave the original mystery a screwball twist with stars Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd trading wisecracks.

Sadly, adding color is all too often the shallow excuse to give classics a makeover. The 1966 version of "Stagecoach," shot in eye-popping DeLuxe color, was probably meant to be the breakthrough role for Alex Cord as the Ringo Kid, much like what the part did for young John Wayne in John Ford’s 1939 original. Cord would have to wait two decades for his 15 minutes of fame as the eye-patched Archangel in TV’s "Airwolf." The remake, bloodied up for ‘60s sensibilities, is notable at least for giving Bing Crosby a memorable if shamelessly hammy swan song to the big screen as a boozy frontier doctor.

In 1986, country music "outlaws" Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson hung out together for a lighthearted TV remake of "Stagecoach." The characters are so inside-jokey and acting so laidback that you get the feeling the only reason these good ol’ boys signed up - along with June Carter Cash, Jessi Colter, David Allan Coe and Johnny and June’s boy John Carter Cash - was to dress up and play cowboys and Indians.

Emulating John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock is approved. Director Richard Franklin, a protégé of Hitchcock’s, had the old man’s blessing to make "Psycho II," and Hitch even sent Mel Brooks a good luck bottle of champagne during production of Brooks’ send-up of Hitchcock films, "High Anxiety." Remaking the old masters, however, can sometimes be considered outright blasphemy.

Leading case in point is "Good Will Hunting" director Gus Van Sant’s ill-advised decision in 1998 to make a shot-by-shot remake, albeit in color (and with the sole addition of a new masturbation scene), of Hitchcock’s 1960 sleep-disturber "Psycho." Even before cameras rolled, Martin Landau, who was a memorable henchman in Hitchcock’s "North by Northwest," and who probably could have told Van Sant, "I knew Hitch, I worked with Hitch, and you, sir, are no Alfred Hitrchcock," grumbled to interviewers, "How is anyone going to make a Hitchcock movie better than Hitchcock? It just goes to show that there’s no new ideas out there."

Heaven forbid any miscreant should attempt a re-imagination (a Hollywood euphemism for lack-of-an-imagination) of the classic comedies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello or the Three Stooges.

In a similar vein and on a closing note, here are The Ten Commandments of Movies Thou Shalt Not Remake:
1. "Gone With the Wind"
2. "The Wizard of Oz"
3. "The Maltese Falcon"
4. "Citizen Kane"
5. "Casablanca"
6. "The Searchers"
7. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"
8. "Easy Rider"
9. "The Wild Bunch"
10. "The Godfather"