7. INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

The room is dimly lit.  A FIGURE is asleep in a bed.  A PHONE RINGS.

SHADOWY FIGURE
(wakes up, grumpily)
By the snapping-in-unison hordes of Jerome Robbins!  Who can that be
at this hour?
(dawning realization)
Hey, wasn't I chained to a wall--?
(picks up phone)
Hello?
The following conversation takes place with shots cut between each character as they talk...um, yell at each other through the phone.
COUNT CONTINUITY
It was no dream, you cloaked clod!  I edited reality and put you at
home!
There's THAT DAMN LAUGH again.
SHADOWY FIGURE
You--What have you done with Franchise Boy?

COUNT CONTINUITY

Oh, he's safe.  For now.  But within mere moments, I'll have pulled
such a harsh editing job that it'll even make The Abyss look a
finished product!

SHADOWY FIGURE

I'll stop you, you cinematic fiend!

COUNT CONTINUITY

Ah, but if you save your partner, then another sequel to Children
of the Corn will be placed into pre-production across town by one
of my minions!
FRANCHISE BOY
(stunned)
No!  No, not a choice like that!  If I rescue my partner, millions
will suffer!  You unbelievable bastard...you leave me no choice.

Last uploaded: December 11, 1998

Some Short Cuts

Greetings, friends and neighbors!  Welcome back to the column that dares to make those awful slurping-at-your-almost-empty-milkshake sounds in the face of respectability.  That's right, the Widgeman's getting jiggy with it once more as we descend into the darkest, most dank fruit cellars of the movie industry.  We're pulling not only skeletons out of closets, but also grabbing internal organs out of gloveboxes, not to mention taking small furry creatures that go meep out of their natural habitat and dropping them into bars full of drunk midgets with guns.  In a word: we're primed.  I've got the coffee on an IV drip, so let's take the safety off and get crazy, eh?

First of all, I've said it before.  I'll say it again.  Adam Sandler, like him or lump him, is a franchise all by his own self. Waterboy makes $130 million in five weeks?  Oh yeah, but just wait until Gus Van Sant decides to remake, no I'm sorry--RECREATE The Cable Guy with Sandler filling Carrey's shoes and Robert Downey, Jr. taking over Broderick's part.  Sorry, I just couldn't wait till the main body of the column to bash Gus.  My apologies...to everyone but Gus.

And let's talk Deep Blue Sea for a second.  Is that a study in how not to do a trailer, or what?  Completely incongruous music, uninteresting shots of stuff, L.L. Cool J looking like Mrs. J just told him to quit rapping and come in for dinner--had I not known better beforehand, I would have thought it just another Jaws movie.  Oh, well.  Maybe they're actually showing us all the really unimpressive stuff up front, instead of what normally happens: giving away the entire film and by the way, here's all the cool action sequences.

And now, before I just explode with my seething and anguish-ridden disgust that's been pent up over the past week, there's something I want to stand up and shout.  And that is...

Gus Van Sant -- Go to Your Room!

That's right.  You're grounded.  And don't pout, you knew this was coming.  You've been bad and aren't allowed near a camera again until you get over whatever it is that's warping your mind.

Now.  I feel like I have to justify myself before I begin getting down to the breaking of mass amounts of furniture, so just bear with me for a second.  There were a lot, I mean a LOT of people naysaying and bitching and moaning about the new Psycho movie.  I must admit, when the idea first got floated around and then was going forward, I thought, "What in the hell do these people think they're doing?  An exact shot for shot remake?  Why?"  Then the trailers came out, and I have to admit that the trailers got me psyched.  Then the rumors started: "They're stringing us along--they're going to change it up and mess with it."  So I started telling people, "No.  I'm going to give Van Sant the benefit of the doubt.  No one could be stupid enough to simply do an exact duplication, shot for shot, of a film."  I mean, Van Sant directed, among other things, my favorite movie of last year, Good Will Hunting.  Surely he would be smarter than that, right?

Guess what?

It was, ostensibly, a shot by shot exact replica of the original.  Almost exactly the same.  Except it was in color, and there was one big difference which we'll touch upon in a moment.  It was also the most pointless film I think I have seen in I don't know how long.  And for those of you keeping score, I include Batman and Robin in that. B&R may have been a pathetic excuse for a comic book movie (or a movie in general, if you think about it--or hell, even if you don't think about it), but at least it attempted to have a point.  Granted, that point was to let Joel Schumacher show everybody that he could, on a huge budget, make the Justice League of America TV pilot look like Oscar-worthy material, but at least there was a point.  In this case...well, let's just look at the what the cast has been saying, shall we?  Why would anyone get involved with such a thing?

Robert Forster has said in interviews that he likens the "recreation" of Psycho to performances of Shakespeare.  His point was that people don't mess with Hamlet every time they do it.  Well, no, but live theater and feature film remakes are two entirely different kinds of flying...altogether.  For the most part, Hamlet doesn't come with much in the way of stage directions.  So you don't have somebody standing there saying, "Yo, Polonius, you're falling out from behind the tapestry all wrong."  And then no one says to Derek Jacobi, "Hey--that To Be or What Speech?  It's taking two minutes longer than Olivier did.  We've got to do it again."  Did you know this--I couldn't possibly make something this weird up: According to a set visit performed by Entertainment Weekly, Forster's speech at the end was taking two minutes too long, so they had to go back and shoot it again, because they'd hate for the film to be any longer than the original.  They had copies of the original on DVD on hand to watch in case they got too far off the beaten path.  What abject silliness is this?

Anne Heche says in an interview with CNN that because the shower scene's in color, it has more shock value.  [Pause]  What?  Does she own stock in Ted Turner or what is going on here?  Next she'll try to convince me that Frank Sinatra colorized really does look better with brown eyes or some other such nonsense.  Hitchcock chose to shoot the original in black and white.  He did so for a reason, and not just so that we could be spared the color sense of whoever designed Heche's outfit in the film.  Is Casablanca a better film colorized?  Does Wizard of Oz only really get your juices flowing after Dorothy leaves Kansas?  I watched Edward Norton kill people in American History X--in black and white--and if it would be more shocking in color, I'm glad Turner hasn't gotten to it yet.  What lunacy.  Anne, you're a better actress than that.  I've done nothing but sing your praises, but now you've got me worried.

But the award for lamest defense of Gus' madness comes from Norman Noveau himself, Vince Vaughn.  I'm glad he thought that annoying snicker... giggle... whatever the hell it was supposed to be was his spin on the character.  For most of the film, he was about as menacing as this Beanie Baby moose that sits next to my computer.  Granted, it can be a mean moose when it doesn't get its pop-tarts first thing in the morning, but that's another story altogether.  Regardless, Vince's take on the whole thing was that it was just like a musician covering somebody else's song.  Off-hand, the first "recreation" of a song that springs to mind where the coverer tried to get as close as possible to the coveree is Faith No More's version of Lionel Richie's "Easy."  However, anyone who's heard that song knows that mockery was on their mind.  When was the last time you heard a song like what Vince is describing, and why would you bother to listen in the first place?  Long ago, in another life, I had a musical band myself.  We despised all-cover bands.  We had a flyer that said, "Because if you wanted covers, you would have stayed at home and listened to your CD collection."  Thank God my widescreen video of the original is handy on the shelf.

And what is Gus' excuse?  He wanted to know what it felt like to be Hitch.  No one can blame him for that, right?  What director wouldn't want to be Hitchcock?  Or Fellini?  Or even Kubrick, just to maybe speed up the process of Eyes Wide Shut, for God's sake.  He talks about the challenges inherit in figuring out how scenes were blocked, how they were shot, etc.  But isn't that something you might cover...in film school?  Isn't it the type of thing you might try with your friends and a video camera in your parents' rental place that's unoccupied for a week?  What I think it boils down to is exactly what Van Sant added to the mix: for Vince to do on screen what he was doing off.  Because I haven't seen a more useless, more uninspired, more masturbatorial film in God knows how long.

Here's a question: Should Psycho have never been remade?  Is it so sacred a film that it should not be tampered with?  I don't know that I buy that.  But at least if someone's going to try their hand at it they should do so with a purpose other than an exercise in wasting the audiences time.  I give Tom Savini and company points just for trying to do something at least with the 1990 version of Night of the Living Dead, although I wasn't pleased with the result.

And the question probably should be asked: Is the remake a bad film?  No.  It's just pointless to watch because it's Psycho...Again.  Gus: If you'd wanted to do justice to Hitch, you would have stepped aside and instead of a RE-creation, you would have pushed for a RE-release.

And I know that none of you probably have enough sense to be embarrassed by what you've done.  Don't worry.  I'm embarrassed enough for all of you.  I hope the film tanks and we can get over this silliness before anybody else gets any ideas.


Widgett is a figment of humanity's collectiveimagination given flesh, operating from a secret underwater fortress inan undisclosed location off the coast of Iowa .  He is the founderof The Sleep Deprivation Instituteand an active member of the Secret Society of Guerilla Ontologists. When he's not championing independent films or complaining, he spends hisdwindling free time writing short fiction, poetry, novels, essays, screenplaysand children's books under a pseudonym.  He also does weddings andbar mitzvahs.  His rates are quite reasonable, as he can normallybe found wandering the halls of Corona HQ with a sign around his neck thatsays, "Will Write For Food."

Previous issues of Widgett's column are also available.