RE-MAKE INSANITY! HOLLYWOOD MUST BE STOPPED!!!! CRAZY BABY CRAZY!

I was going to remain silent on a whole bunch of really stupid Re-Make concepts, but with ROLLERBALL opening and realizing just how bad that film made me feel, knowing that I'm going to be forced to see it this Friday so I can see the final film, and literally this would be like Mr Bobbit getting back in bed with Loreena... one of those.... NOT FOR ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD sort of things, but lo while I walk through the valley of piss poor films, I will be brave, I will not flinch.. much...

While I've been considering actually placing money down for ROLLERBALL - I've been reading news, scary things like a remake of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Now years ago, Tobe Hooper told me that he was thinking of doing one. Turns out that Michael Bay has decided to open up a new producing wing for low-budget films. The first one announced is a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake being written by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel... the original writers. Now, there is no director attached. This isn't being reputed as being directed by Michael Bay. In fact it may in fact be directed by Tobe Hooper himself. Now, having Tobe revisit his birthplace as a filmmaker (none of you have seen EGGSHELLS, I have, but that's a long story), that's like Hitchcock revisiting THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. Personally I always have felt that the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was a perfect film. That there was absolutely nothing that needed further developing. That the teenagers all felt real. They didn't look like actors, they looked like teenagers. The 'Family' didn't look like actors, they looked like psychotic bar-b-que folk cooking up roadside teens and selling them to the folks on the highway. A low budget remake is the only way to handle this material, but there shouldn't be a single known actor in the whole film. Having them look of today would blow, having them with cel-phones would suck. And doing it shot for shot would be fruitless. Ultimately I really don't see the point in doing this, but it is Hooper and Henkel going at it, maybe they have an angle they've always wanted to explore. Maybe.

Ok, while I just can't get excited about a remake of TCM, today's news that MGM - the same criminal organization responsible for ROLLERBALL has the nerve to remake two films that were perfect for their times. Two films completely not needing to be remade.

FOXY BROWN - There is no black woman working today that is so much as even a blemish on Pam Grier's fine ass ass. The concept of some idiot trying to remake this classic is just wrong. Do I need to see some hip hop re-mix of FOXY BROWN? Do I wanna see a gangsta tuff FOXY BROWN? Listen - Do you want to see Halle Berry do this? I mean are they gonna go hard R? Will they cast a woman that could kick ass as well as be hot as hell. I'm sorry, Halle Berry is hot as hell, but there's only one Pam Grier and we haven't seen her like since. Will they set this film in the seventies? Or does it need to be made in the 2000s? SCREW THIS! This movie is wonderfully entertaining as is. Don't fuck with it!

The same morons at MGM want to remake WALKING TALL! Ok, 10 to 1 these idiots have never actually seen WALKING TALL, but I have with a packed audience at QT 4 and folks... The original WALKING TALL is one of the meanest, most brutal, hardcore badass sweaty south asskicking flicks ever made. Again -- we don't have a man working in films today that can fill those pants of Buford Pusser. We don't have sweaty gods like Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson (who played Buford in the 2 sequels in the WALKING TALL Trilogy). Can they make the film the gut stab that the original was? Let's face folks, MGM is the most gutless idea-lacking studio on the planet right now. They're just going through their library raping it for all its worth. THERE is no earthly reason to revisit Buford Pusser's story. It is a story of its time. It does not need to be brought 'up to date'. There is no one on the planet that can play the character as well as Joe Don did.

Then DISNEY wants to do a live-action remake of WIND AND THE WILLOWS. They don't even really know how they want to do it. They know they'll either do it like STUART LITTLE or with CGI enhanced costumed performers. Or maybe they could do it with sock puppets or like THUMB WARS with faces cgi-ed onto thumbs.... yeah, that'd rock. Ok, I suppose a CGI - Stuart Little / Babe telling of the WIND AND THE WILLOWS would be cool, but frankly Disney and Basil Rathbone did an amazing job in the animated version back in 1949. Basically that was perfect. Blissful and joyful. Basically it is an insane amphibian tale of a geek version of Charles Foster Kane, and that's cool and all, but I don't know if I really trust anyone to tell this story with the sense of timelessness that it needs. Look at what wound up happening to THE GRINCH, when I saw that rough cut the key things that I told Ron Howard were wrong was that the film couldn't have those nods to the present... the director scene or the lightsaber scenes because while funny now.... in 4 months, 2 years and decade from now, it would be completely bankrupt. If someone is going to tell WIND AND THE WILLOWS it needs to be told in a magical period make-believe world where animals and men live in conjunction with the world of the turn of the 20th century in England. It could be magical, but I just don't trust Disney.

Meanwhile there is so much material that has never been tapped. I guess it is a fruitless argument. Asking Hollywood to make H.P. Lovecraft to make the other stories that authors like William Diehl or Alfred Bester or Harlan Ellison or Madeleine L'Engle or Norton Juster or Carol Kendall or Frederick Pohl or Chad Oliver or Joe R Lansdale or Gene Wolfe or Richard Cumberland or Jorge Borges or Thomas Laird or Kinky Friedman or on and on and on.... There is so much rich unadapted material out there. Frigging great stories that are perfectly ready for film adaptations. Stop regurgitating decades old film successes, get off your lazy asses, find material that is great and make it. Enough of this bullshit. Do what hasn't been done before.... not that which has. ARGH!