Cupcakes, lieblings, muffins, loves-of-my-life--let's have a tete-a-tete, shall we? I was thinking about the remake/reboot phenomenon, inspired by news that "Suspiria" is next on the chopping block ([snark]apparently the original was directed by Some Dude named Dario Argento--perhaps you might've seen it? [end snark]). You might think I was ghastly in my rage, like some sort of avenging goddess of gore... but you'd be wrong.
Frankly, assorted internet Scarletts, I don't give a damn.
I was a little surprised not to feel the hideous taste of bile rising in my throat at the announcement, so I had to give it a little thought. Friends--I think I have this remake/reboot thing all figured out: it's guerilla marketing at its purest, and I'll outline how it works:
- Scour messageboards and identify a Beloved Genre Property (BGP)
- Snag rights to BGP
- Attach Controversial Director (CD) to BGP (extra points if CD has some sort of music video link)
- Issue press release announcing that CD is going to be involved in "an ambitious reimagining" of BGP (extra points if you include a quote from CD on how he will "completely blow people's minds" with how incredibly, awesomely different his film will be from the original)
- Set stopwatch for thirty-seven seconds after the press release crosses the wire (SCIENCE has proven that this is the amount of time it will take for the first Outraged Tweet [OT] to appear)
- Sit back and allow horror bloggers to flood the intertubes with OTs and profanity-laden blog posts about the sacrilegious nature of the BGP remake
- Enjoy free marketing campaign; acquire salary increase
- A year later and one month prior to the scheduled release of BGP remake, issue "exclusive" clips to three or four horror news sites simultaneously, inspiring further outrage and ensuing free marketing
All this has nothing to do with the potential quality of the BGP remake--hell, a lot of the time remakes seem to just take key elements of their source material and go in whatever direction they want to go in. "Dawn of the Dead" was "a movie about zombies," and I suspect "Suspiria" is going to be "a movie about witches"*
THIS particular fangirl is going to snark only as appropriate and stop fanning the flames of the remake/reboot phenomenon. The part of it that twists my panties is the cynicism of it all--instead of saying "CD is going to make a movie about zombies/witches/serial killers," producers realize that by harnessing the OUTRAGE of horror bloggers, asses will be in seats just by getting people to *recognize* their film at the box office. Maybe if we stop caring so much then, like schoolyard bullies, the marketingvolk will just go away.
*NOT a giallo. Please stop calling it a giallo--you are wrong. Thank you.
21 comments:
You know what is awesome about the Intertubes-Horror movie remake connection, though? I can watch a clip like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOpsbAUEe90
without actually having to sit through the remake of The Wicker Man. Genius!
Also, now that I've had a sip of morning tea and can actually think of else besides bears punching pagan women, I think you might be attributing too much clout to horror blogging and Twitter.
I don't think that the marketing of movie remakes is really aimed at the hardcore horrornerds that read horror blogs because those aren't the people who pack the theater on opening night. The "horror community" seems like a pretty small, semi-incestuous group; I'm not convinced it's really a viral way to spread the word on your startling re-imagining of the Puppet Master franchise.
Then again, you're right that if people showed a little discrimination in their movie-watching habits, remakes would probably disappear entirely. Too often there is a misguided idea that if a horror movie comes out you *have* to go see it because you have to show Hollywood that people will go see horror movies. So they'll keep making more, you see. More remakes that you didn't like or want in the first place. Vote with your dollar, folks.
HOLY CRAP, Jack! That was a truly amazing moment in cinema. If only THAT was the commercial for the movie, I might've seen it (or even remembered that it existed at all--yikes). You're probably right about the horror-specific portions of the blogging world, and once again I have experienced Epic Fail in my lack of linguistic precision. Let's use the term "genre" in place of horror, as is my usual preference, and include sites like io9 and Ain't It Cool (though I'd debate that Shock Till You Drop, Bloody Disgusting, and Dread Central wield a significant amount of persuasive power with regards to horror-specific media). I've seen both those sites' names used in television commercials for genre flicks recently, and have seen articles about the remake/reboot thing featured there with a reasonable degree of frequency.
If the goal of marketing is to make your "brand" memorable (not lovable or desirable--just MEMORABLE enough to sway your decision), then getting an "in" with genre bloggers is a smart thing. They're tenacious motherfuckers, frequently with more opinions than insight, and making a statement like "OMFG THE SUSPIRIA REMAKE WILL SUCK" comes across, though the "telephone game" of the intertubes (the same one that has classified "Suspiria" as a giallo in last week's Village Voice, for example), as "oh hey, there's some movie coming out that has all the nerds freaking out--I'm bored and it's Friday and I have ten bucks; let's go see it."
It's a relatively cheap way to get instant name recognition and create buzz.
Heh, perhaps my perceptions on this matter are askew because I'm far, far out of the loop...I don't even know what an "io9" or a "Shock Till You Drop" are! And color me surprised that Dread Central still exists!
I do, however, know *all about* the post-apocalyptic sci-fi video for Rick Springfield's "Bop 'til You Drop": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9XXbx5fb2g
Don't stop 'til you get what you want.
More fine scenes from The Wicker Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6i2WRreARo
Apparently the movie is all about Nicholas Cage being a dick and beating on women?
Though I'm only opening myself up to heartbreak, I actually hold some hopes for the Suspiria remake mostly due to the involvement of David Gordon Green as writer/director.
Though he's known mainly for the stoner flick Pineapple Express, in his more indie days he was responsible for the brilliant George Washington, Undertow, and All the Real Girls. Those are all really great flicks, visually lush films with an almost Euro arthouse sensibility.
DGG is a clever match to the material. That doesn't guarantee anything, I know. But it gives me hope.
I don't know why people go see these things - especially when they know they will probably suck mards. I don't even allow this garbage to stink up my Netflix queue because life is too short. Better to catch up on the movies I missed back when they actually knew how to make them. I already HAVE an opinion on the Texas Chainsaw remake WITHOUT actually sitting through it. Why punish myself?
It takes a lot to get me to enter the theater anymore - and the low quality of the "product" they're showing is only part of it. I'm old enough to remember when you weren't being sold every second you were in the building. The moviegoing experience has become odious. One of my favorite activities has been hijacked, and before I spend my money I need to be reasonably certain that the movie will be good enough to hypnotize me into forgetting the crappy, hateful, venal multiplex experience I'm having. That's where my bar for success is these days.
Horror remakes are NO TEMPTATION to me - at all. They seem to be made for teenagers who are too green and callow to know the real thing. So, they're remaking Suspiria? Natch. Do I have to care? Why, when there are a lot of way more important things going on in the world? After the parasites have fleeced the suckers, the original will still be around. I don't need to pollute myself with the knockoff to compare when I can stay home and read a good book.
And this is a trap that fandom seems to fall into consistently - comics fans being the worst. Many of them know it will suck, but they need to see it anyway so they can talk about how bad it sucks and in what specific ways. Such people are in serious need of something constructive to do with their time and energy. Is this going to help them get a better paying job?
And why do the studios care what these fans think when they will flock to a movie with even bad word of mouth just so they can scribble authoritatively about its rankness online? Did Batman Begins really need an hour of the kind of expository crap that gives comics geeks a boner and cineastes a case of the nods? Why not make a GOOD movie when the geeks are going to show up anyway, if only to bitch about it?
People! Just give ME your money, and I'll shoot a godawful ripoff of something you love in my back yard.
Brilliant!!! You are really on to something here, Kate.
This and general laziness are why I'm not posting about the Suspiria remake.
I was going to say a lot of what anonymous did (though not as profanely). The real reason for remakes--if only in terms of titles--is because they are easier to sell.
The real ridiculous part is using an established name when only a slim portion of the target audience has probably heard of--much less care about--something like Suspiria, 13 Ghosts or The Hills Have Eyes. Or the Wicker Man.
Between Netflix and living near a film archive that has screenings six nights a week, I don't have much incentive to go to new movies.
(And it also bugs the hell out of me when people call Suspiria a giallo. But I just thought I was being too geeky.)
I have been thinking about the remake/reboot phenomenon and came to a weird conclusion. The remakers are more honest than some directors.
I just saw Citizen Kane, and saw all the little steals from it. At least a remake would say "yes, I am stealing from Citizen Kane."
As far as indignation goes, I am with you. I never mention people from Faux news, as that is just one more hit on the search engines. I try to keep my anger to a "meh" level and save the free press for things I already like.
At the very least, remake and sequel addiction in Hollywood has inspired some of the most entertaining film criticism I've read.
Your site is no exception, Kate. Insidiously witty, thoughtful and well-informed writing about zombies and psycho killers. Is this allowed? Keep this up, please.
The SnarkWAsaB00jum Zone touts:
Dunno whut YO problem is--*MY* remake/reb00t of...
DEVIL'S REJECTS, starring
*Thee Tenebrous*
in the Sheri Moon role
is gonna ROOL THE STREETZ W/A SAVAGE VENGEANCE
*YO* butts will be in the seats.
CHEERING.
count. on. IT!
;D
that was fun!
Blame it on the bean counters. With the high cost of printing, marketing and distributing a new movie, it is easier for Hollywood to do a crappy remake of an existing horror film with a built-in audience (who may go to see it if only to jeer at it), than to try to take a risk and develop something new. Hollywood went through this in the 80s and 90s when it was remaking foreign films into American versions (like taking the classic French Cousin-Cousine and turning into that Ted Danson shitbag Cousins). It is easier to sell it to the Board and the auditors of the Big Hollywood Company than to pitch them on something new and risky. I would give them some credit if they took a property that was a drama or romance and turned it into a horror film (like Wes Craven did when he remade Bergman's the Virgin Spring as Last House on the Left). At least Craven showed some thinking, and not just craven commercialism.
Of course, I wouldn't be too surprised if the Big Hollywood Studio behind the remakes also bought stock in the original so they can dump it on DVD and sell it to the fools who went to see the remake first and didn't know the original existed until Big Hollywood Studio sold it to them on DVD.
Oh yeah, and when I see "re-boot" it just makes me want to boot, which I guess is the point, right?
Methinks the Joey P'zzone just wants to see you do the "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees..." bit from The Devil's Rejects.
I can't say that that is a terrible idea that I do not support.
Kate, I think you're on to something, but the only real benefit to a studio from this approach is the savings on marketing. Assuming that the blogosphere reflects mass opinion is a risky proposition. How many Americans have seen Suspiria, after all? They may have seen it mentioned in some magazine's list of greatest stuff, but I doubt that alone would generate much interest in seeing a remake. The thing to do to really mess with bloggers and make more money at the box office is to remake Suspiria under another name. Then you still get the bloggers howling about a remake, while you can sell the thing under an allegedly more marketable title.
The worst case scenario from a business standpoint is if someone's doing this purely out of nostalgia without calculating whether that nostalgia is widely shared. There's a name for this fallacy, and that name is Speed Racer.
Hi Again,
The answer: Creative Bankruptcy.
Who remembers Sweet November from 1968? (I only remember it from reading Pauline Kael's withering review.) The original is a property that Warner has so little confidence in that they released it as part of their "archive collection" - no retail brick and mortar sales.
So why remake it? They probably had rights to the property. Nobody does remember it, and the premise might actually sound fresh to the young braindeads who are in the market for a date movie. Not that I think they'd put that much faith in the premise, either - the draw here (for somebody I guess) is Keanu and Charlize making goo goo face. (Excuse me, I need to stop for a second.)
Anyway, the decision to do a remake here seems to have had next to nothing to do with the original, and more to do with a really desperate dearth of ideas in Hollywood.
Read (if you can stand it) Robert McKee's screenwriting bible Story. McKee has taken Aristotle's Poetics and sucked every drop of value out of it by expanding it into a recipe for cookie-cutter pieces of crap. And that's what we've been seeing for the last decade or more.
So not only are there woefully few decent screenwriters in the current generation (McKee's book is the text for many screenwriting classes), the studios financing these things wouldn't know an original idea if it hit them in the head with a crowbar and raped them in the bung, and would even likely be afraid of originality if they encountered it.
And why should anyone risk good money on something original, anyway, when the public at large turn out like swine at the slops trough for unashamedly derivative crap.
Do audiences actually want originality?
I'm at the point of accepting the probability that the culture has reached a stage in its degeneracy where the two-legged swine outnumber the rest of us, and that the decline in the quality of cinema since the 1970's can be read like the rings in a tree trunk for just one snapshot of that sad story.
The TakesTheP'zzone heartily congratulates...
THEE Tenebrous for having sech the perceptive correspondents as Messr. Jack ;D
Let's see if I can post this comment as a two-parter. PART ONE:
OK, I seriously need to get my priorities straight. All this awesome discussion took place while I was out trying to keep fresh pad thai on the Tenebrous Palate and new Fluevogs on the Tenebrous Feet ;P
Lemme try to catch up to the rest of you guys!
CRwM, I'll confess I'm entirely unfamiliar with this director's work, but judging by your comment and what I've read elsewhere regarding his films, I'll confess that my curiosity is higher than it was on the outset. I'm in wait-and-see mode, albeit a *curiouser* wait-and-see mode than I was a week ago!
Anon--I think this comment was ESPECIALLY on-the-money:
>>I'm old enough to remember when you weren't being sold every second you were in the building.
I am SO with you on this--I remember the first time I saw a commercial that was not a trailer in a movie theatre, and I almost flipped my lid. It's a sad statement that I'm already used to this kind of captive-audience selling.
Also, THIS is a crazy-accurate statement:
>>Many of them know it will suck, but they need to see it anyway so they can talk about how bad it sucks and in what specific ways.
I'll cop to having been guilty of this, particularly in the age of on-demand cable and Netflix. That having been said, I've watched a lot of non-remake films for similar reasons (most recently, "Batman & Robin," last night--I got twenty minutes in before the tears of blood started). I wish I could say I was over the "scab-picking" impulse, but I'm not a big enough person, alas :/
But yes, this is a further tendril of the web that is the built-in fan response leading to familiarity and name recognition.
Rev--thanks a million, man :) It's an over-simplification of How Films Get Greenlit, but it's certainly a crucial part of the puzzle in my opinion.
Nate--never underestimate the power of General Laziness ;)
MDG--you're absolutely correct in that remakes are easier to sell. Speaking of geekiness, part of me (the ambitious part, which I REALLY need to get to STFU at work) would love to do a breakdown of marketing dollars spent on remakes versus new properties and how that contributes to the ease of selling a remake!
AND PART TWO:
Darius, THIS:
>>I try to keep my anger to a "meh" level and save the free press for things I already like.
...is where I *try* to concentrate the majority of my bloggin' efforts. Sage, wise, awesome words, mister :)
Joe V.--thank you so much for your kind words! I'm beaming over here, mister.
Joey Z and Jack--I told everybody I'd show them my boobs provided Rob Zombie's next movie is NOT "The Blob." We'll wait and see how this all pans out. I maintain veto power over the "assless pants" issue, though.
Fred, THIS:
>>it is easier for Hollywood to do a crappy remake of an existing horror film with a built-in audience
...is it exactly. Like you say, there's a built-in audience, and as MDG points out, by capitalizing on a lesser-known name that the built-in audience recognizes, there's a geometric explosion of name-recognition nonsense before anybody ever puts Frame One on film. Krazee...
Samuel, I TOTALLY agree with THIS:
>>Assuming that the blogosphere reflects mass opinion is a risky proposition<
It's not an issue of swaying the *opinion* of the public on the film in question, it's merely an issue of having someone point to one of the twelve or fourteen or twenty movies on the board at the multiplex and say "yes, I will hand you ten bucks to see THAT ONE," simply because they *know the title*. It's the ol' "no publicity is bad publicity" thing :/
Anon., THIS:
>>Do audiences actually want originality?
...is fodder for a whole 'nother Oprah, methinks! I'd like to see someone with a wider appreciation/knowledge of cinema tackle this question. I'm a genre gal, me, and as such I like to seek out the nuances on the same, so the question of "originality" isn't one I think I'm particularly qualified to discuss...!
Thank you to everyone for awesomely thought-provoking comments. Y'all are some smart cookies :)
a remake of Suspiria is a stupid idea for Suspiria was a sensual experience more than a movie. it will be a completly different thing. Same as, say, "Breathless" was to "A bout de Souffle". A mass-marketed, self-conscious pile of pop references. I won't pay for it. I will download it and eventually watch it. And sneer.
your post was superb.
a reader from france
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