Peter Bart of Variety informs us that the movie Red Dawn is going to be remade. He liked it even less than Carol and I did. I think I remember us leaving after about forty-five minutes or so. The jingoism was loud, clumsy and inane. Bart explains what happened:
Peter Bart:
MGM, for example, is recrafting a curious ’80s movie called "Red Dawn," and I can’t quite figure out why. I’m embarrassed to admit I was involved in putting together the first "Red Dawn" in 1984. Indeed, the original movie was a classic example of a good idea gone bad.
When I first pounced on the project (I was MGM’s senior VP for production at the time), it was a sharply written anti-war movie called "Ten Soldiers" written by a bright young filmmaker named Kevin Reynolds, then a Spielberg protege. The movie was set in the near future as a combined force of Russians and Cubans launched a surreptitious invasion of the Southwestern U.S. Ten kids take to the hills when their small town is captured and they turn into a skilled and lethal guerrilla band.
In due course, the movie started as a sort of "Lord of the Flies," but then the chieftains at MGM got a better idea. Instead of making a poignant little antiwar movie, why not make a teen "Rambo" and turn the project over to John Milius, a genial and rotund filmmaker who loved war movies and also loved war? The idea was especially popular with a member of the MGM board of directors, General Alexander Haig, the former Nixon chief of staff, who yearned to supervise the film personally and develop a movie career.
For the rest go here: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118009233.html?categoryid=1&cs=1
Ed here: General Haig of "I'm in charge here!" (meaning the United States) when constitutionally he wasn't in charge of anything excepted his rather dramatically tailored uniform? Gee, how could a film with him go wrong?
You got me excited here, thinking they were remaking the old East meets West western, and I'm wondering "Who on earth could fill Toshiro Mifune's sandals?" But no, that was Red Sun. Too bad.
ReplyDeleteInfamously the film reviewer for NPR praised the original for it's depiction of the teen guerrilla's. He had been part of the French Resistance during WWII and said "that's how we did it."
ReplyDeleteI guy I went to high school with is working on the remake right now. I ran into him at a party a couple of weeks back, and he said that this remake is going to be more explosions and things getting blowed up real good, and less of young people dealing with loss (which really is what happens though the film) and fighting for something you have been told you should--- only to find that the price they are paying is much to high.
I'd love to read Reynolds' original screenplay.
ReplyDeleteCan you host it, Mr, Gorman?