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"When we are dealing with business on the internet, there
is only one thing worse than a spammer...A COPYCAT! "
- Debbie Soloman, eversoft.com
"The first, of course, is: Who needed a remake? Well,
nobody ever needs a remake."
- Joanne Weintraub, JSOnline.com
December 27th, 2002
I just wasted twenty bucks.
It happened quite easily, actually. Here I am,
the day after Christmas in a Circuit City, looking to update
my DVD collection by 3 more films and after finding the three
that I wanted (Minority Report, Ice Age, and Crocodile
Hunter - Collision Course) I fell into a well laid trap.
I was at the checkout counter ready to make my purchase and
saw a CD. It was entitled, The Wall 2000.
Wow! More remastered Floyd!
Let me stop my rant at this moment to let you
know that within the last few years I've really started to get
back into some classic Pink Floyd. When I first got into Pink
Floyd, way back in 1979, I really didn't understand that music.
Hey, I was only thirteen. I was young. I was inexperienced.
I had no access to recreational chemical enhancements. What
did I know? All in all I was just another brick in the wall.
I didn't need no education and I didn't need no thought control.
What child could possibly understand the phenomenon that was
Roger Waters?
In any event, I've rediscovered Pink Floyd in
my thirties. And you really haven't experienced Pink Floyd until
you've synced Dark Side of the Moon to the Wizard of Oz. I don't
know who the genius was who thought that one up but I recommend
it highly. Just remember to start the CD (when on infinite repeat)
on the 3rd roar of the MGM lion. Then turn down the sound on
your TV. Let the good times roll after that. It's just amazing.
Now the only thing I find more amazing than Pink
Floyd is remastered Pink Floyd. The geniuses at the recording
studio found of a way of digitally remastering Pink Floyd. YOU
CAN HEAR EVERYTHING! It is just intense. They've done it to
Dark Side of the moon. It's like nothing you've ever heard before.
I also own the movie The Wall on DVD. With a really good
sound system, you can redefine reality. But I digress.
Back to the rant.
So, I saw The Wall 2000. It was just sitting
there waiting to be bought. It said, "Here I am! Buy me!
Buy Me! I'm great!! You've been searching for me!!!" And
I bought it. And I was happy. All was well with the world....
until...
I popped it into the CD player. And I listened
to it. I listened to most of the first song before I hit the
skip button. Then I listened to some of the second song and
hit the skip button. I was left with one indellible thought
- WHAT UTTER CRAP! It wasn't Pink Floyd at all. It was
some group of idiots who apparently decided that what Pink Floyd
did wasn't good enough and needed a more contemporary sound.
I bought this piece of crap by mistake thinking it was something
else. I'm certain that's how they've made all of their sales
- on other people's cluelessness. And with synthesizer in hand
and not a clue about Roger Waters' pain and dementia, they went
about making a CD that had the words and basic melody of Pink
Floyd, The Wall but it seemed to have been made for a dance
club. This had a disco club fast beat. It was like listening
to a lounge act.*
It was sacrilege.
How many times do we get a remake that is nowhere
near as good as the original? Some producer who has too much
bong resin trapped in his cerebral cortex decides that the original
needs to be updated with the times and makes a remake. Do you
think they are a good idea? How about Tin Lizzie's Money,
That's What I Want, Marlo Thomas' It's a Wonderful Life,
Taco's Puttin On the Ritz, Adam Ant's Where Did Our
Love Go, Puff Daddy's Every Breathe You Take, Puff
Daddy's Kashmir, The William Hurt version of Lost
In Space, the DiCaprio version of Romeo And Juliet,
the remake of Hitchcock's Psycho, and the king of all
bad things brought to screen Joel Schumacher's Batman And
Robin.
A pox on Joel Schumacher and all of his unlikely
descendants.
Of course, there are some good remakes out there
- not many but they do exist. I think of the second part of
Soft Cell's Tainted Love, where they go into Where
Did Our Love Go, Bruce Springsteen's Viva Las Vegas,
Cheap Trick's Don't Be Cruel, The Harrison Ford version
of Sabrina, Elvis Presley's Hound Dog, The Beatles'
Twist and Shout, Los Lobos' La Bamba (ironically
- also Twist and Shout if you listen to the melody),
and, of course, the Peter Jackson version of Lord of the
Rings (remade live after the animated Ralph Bakshi version.
Bakshi's was less than stellar and used the abysmal rotoscope
technology).
But that does not answer the question, "Why
do it?"
I think it can only be written off as arrogance.
Someone somewhere thought, "Hey, I can do a better version
that that. Let's do it." Hopefully, they go through all
of the legality of making a remake and then they do it. Most
of the time I listen to this and either think two thoughts,
either "Pretty good" or "There is just no creativity
left in this world." I usually think the latter.
The remake is only in extremes. Very, very good
or very, very, very, very, very, bad. The product is either
a Lord of the Rings or a Wall 2000.
Take the latter for example. The people who decided
to make this CD knew nothing of Roger Waters. There are three
major issues with Waters: the death of his father, the dominance
of his mother, and the love and betrayal of his wife. If you
don't know that you don't know The Wall. When you hear
Waters sing the songs, you hear the pain in the music. You hear
the madness in the melody and in the guitar. The planes crashing
are a factor of the music. The Wall is about a rocker who has
never recovered from the fact his father died in WWII for England.
The Wall is the persona he has made.
The artist who made The Wall 2000 never
got that or, if he did, he could not convey it.
Whereas in a good remake like Peter Jackson's
Lord of the Rings an improvement has been made.
This version of the film conveys the urgency of destroying the
ring and the constant hunt for the ringbearer. It illustrates
that every minute spent outside of a sanctuary the ring bearer
is vulnerable to not only the corruption of the ring of power
but being caught by the Black Riders. The former version did
not illustrate this. The current version does. The audience
now realizes what the author, J. R. R. Tolkien, wanted to communicate.
And that's the name of the game. Who comes closer
to the ideal version of the message? Who brings across the ideas
the of the song or story that the author wrote? The person,
singer, actor, or entertainer that does that is the real owner
of the art.
Going back to the Lord of the Rings analogy,
the reason that Peter Jackson's version of the movie works better
than any other that has been attempted, is because he and his
crew of writers spent months studying and restudying the original
story. Do you know how many versions of the screenplay had been
made before final drafts were made? A lot. I cringe anytime
I see a Rankin/Bass version of either The Hobbit or The
Return of the King or as I like to put it Lord of the
Rings: The Muscial. These are the same people who made all
of the Christmas Specials we are assaulted with every Christmas
season.**
So rather than ask "Why do a remake?",
I'll ask the question, "Who owns the piece?"
Truly, the author owns the piece. But, the artist
that represents the author represents him in any version of
his material. Bad version, bad representation, no ownership.
The good version equals ownership because that's the one that
sticks in the listener's ear or in the audience's head.
Chew on that the next time you are bopping around
in a dance club listening to the muzak version of Comfortably
Numb or wondering what Christmas would be like if Marlo
Thomas did not exist.
______________________________________________________________________________________
*- Incidentally, there is a CD out called Lounge Against the
Machine. It is taking hard rock and puts it against a lounge
act. You know what you are getting into with that one. It's
quite funny.
**- Put one foot in front of the other....
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