I presume, a presumption which has been shown to be in error time and again, that when a group of “creative” “talents” developing a movie call the film by the title of the original novel, or short story, that somehow there is a idea that the work has a primary relationship to some small thing, like the premise and/or idea, and possibly the dramatic arc, of the original tale. Further, in a far more commercial vein, that some cachet will be accreted and that those who have a fondness for the original story will then be attracted to the movie theatre to plunk down a ducat or some small tribute for a brief moment of enjoyment. If this is the great notion, why then do those aforementioned “developers” twist the story and the premise into an unrecognizable pretzel deeply obscuring its prototypical breathing brilliance?
On further reflection I believe that they are just trying to raise my dander to a full case of dandruff. It has become personal.
A recent example from this here fin d’annee is the movie entitled “I Am Legend”. I viewed it at a local plex with some of my family. It was a rousing Christmas sensation. Full of ghoulies and zombies and vampires (I think) that moved with a speed that would put a wraith traveling on the bullet train to shame and alas an intellect akin to a wild boar that has just been gored with a spear. They would definitely not make good neighbors. It is not clear how anyone but a movie hero with a couple hours and a story to finish could have survived this animated onslaught.
You know, I would have been happy if they had just titled “I Am Legend” something different, like “The Last Man on Earth” or even “The Omega Man”, and exposed in the credits that the movie was loosely based on a Richard Matheson story.
True, then I’d most likely have stayed home to enjoy the goodies from my stocking…come to think of it, that is an entirely better reason to be happy.
I won’t go into the rather simple plot of “I Am Legend”, the blockbuster, except to say, “Wrong Legend!”
I have decided to turn to the inauthentic and commercial side myself and present several works of fiction that have had impact on me and I think everyone else. I rework them in treatment here only so that they can be made more interesting than the unimaginative gunk created by the original dunderheaded authors.
Little Women, I find, is in bad need of a remake.
An updated story of Joe and his relationship with both the boy and his gray haired papa next door. Having, if you will, the son in the morning and the father at night. Joe’s sister, Amy, will turn the young naïve neighbor lad , Laurie (go figure), into a raging heterosexual when she meets him at a Southeast Asian Inn on a tour de monde designed to show the proper young lady not only the Occidental infusion of the Orient but to teach her the proper application of credit cards. They adopt a “cute chubby” indigenous baby, marry and come home to sponge off Joe and his poor dead mother. Joe will write a soft boiled mystery story about Siamese twin detectives, possibly two, and fall in love with a roadie, nicknamed Boperino, from a fusion band, who dies in an air disaster involving a blimp and an experimental kite carrying a large skeleton key somewhere over Nebraska. Joe dies a lonely old spinster on a cold brownstone in a field somewhere near his home town. He is curled up on his sled with the logo “Rosencrantz Limburger”. The flames lick the sled. The cheese runs. The film flickers out. Finis.
War and Peace which is too long by half also needs a serious make-over.
Raskolnikov, (I know, but to have a hero called Pierre would muck up the whole French side of the plot with Napoleon and his lover Joe who makes a brief appearance from Little Women), doesn’t kill his landlady but he does take a dancing bear on the road and meets a dazzling ingénue, Katherine Ivanovich Kalashnikov, on the vaudeville circuit. He marries this lovely Kat with dynamite chachkas, who passes away within a year from a virulent form of acne. Rassie, as he is known to all, then dates his landlady who kills him. The story moves to the Western Front where Alois Schicklgruber dances a jig on the grave of the Arch Bishop of Canterbury and war ensues. Massive gouts of CGI bare a realistic representation of WWII, WWI, WW0, and Agincourt, a smattering of Paris coyly making eyes at a definitely underdressed Helen, who is bidding farewell to Aeneas, who astride a Trojan Horse travels with Seven League Boots to the Italian peninsula where he kills Seven-at-One-Blow and subsequently feeds the multitude from a bowl of gravy. After this heavy representation of War artistically tinted in a flush of rude sanguine, the only Peace you will find is to hurry home, climb into your hammock and bludgeon yourself to sleep. RIP.
I dream of a career positively thwarting the creative wash of the ever present shadows of conglomerate film studios. Do they truly believe that they are the only ones who can twist a plot beyond recognition? Surely the delicate thrust of my corkscrew and my vigorous parry must convince them otherwise.
Roll over Orson Welles and tell Margaret Mitchell the news.