Well, dear readers, once again Hollywood felt the need to unnecessarily remake a classic film. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, once again Hollywood felt the need to unnecessarily remake a classic film, this time the film in question being Carrie. This is actually the second remake, as it was remade for TV several years ago. Brian De Palma, a director I am not that fond of (with certain exceptions) made his best film with Carrie. It’s just a film where his usual homages did not get in the way at all. But he was working from a really good screenplay and his casting of it was just perfect straight down the line. It was just one of those projects where everything had synchronicity. I saw it within the first few days of its run and thought it worked incredibly well, with the exception of the use of split-screen in the prom devastation. It worked but I felt it would have worked better with conventional editing. But there were two things that truly made the movie what it was – Sissy Spacek’s brilliant and luminous portrayal of the title character, and Piper Laurie’s all too real and therefore frightening performance as her mother. With Spacek you understand the pain, the shyness, the terror and when she makes her transformation at the prom it’s completely magical and very emotionally satisfying and even moving. By the time the pail is about to be emptied there isn’t an audience member who isn’t in love with Carrie and therefore that moment becomes even more terrible as it approaches. And Miss Laurie is beyond brilliant – she is in a whole other stratosphere and she should have won the Oscar for her performance, and so should have Miss Spacek for hers (both were nominated). De Palma’s direction for most of it is masterful, from the classic opening to the classic ending. He occasionally has sly movie fun, as when Carrie tells her mother she’s been invited to the prom and her mother says, “Prom?” just as thunder is heard and lightning illuminates her face.
The supporting cast was also great – John Travolta, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen and especially William Katt. For me, Betty Buckley was not quite up to the other performances, but that was partially due to some not great writing for her character. The shocker ending remains a classic and the scream in the theater remains the loudest I have ever heard. Add in Jack Fisk’s production design and Pino Donaggio’s incredible score and you pretty much have a masterpiece of a movie.
So, now we have the 2013 version. It was supposed to have come out early in the year, but was postponed and reshoots happened. When it finally came out, it did middling business (despite what they would have you believe) and got a lot of tepid reviews. I had no interest in seeing it at all, but there it was on Netflix, so I watched it. On many occasions it is literally almost a shot-for-shot remake. They used as the basis Lawrence D. Cohen’s original script and had a new writer add completely unnecessary things and make it more about the hot button bullying. There is none of the sly humor of the original. Everything here is completely humorless at every step. Julianne Moore is a terrific actor, but she mumbles and whispers her way through Margaret White, and they’ve added really idiotic stuff for her to do, like cutting herself constantly (on purpose) – it just doesn’t work and it’s nowhere near what Miss Laurie’s performance was. Chloe Grace Moretz is okay as Carrie, but you never buy the shyness or the awkwardness of her because she just looks like every other young actor working today. Plus, they go way, way overboard on her telekinesis starting right at the beginning of the film. De Palma introduced it very slowly and never overplayed it so that when she unleashes her fury at the prom it actually means something.
Here we get instance after instance of it, big show-off CGI crap and by the time you get to the prom you’ve basically seen the tricks and the prom fury doesn’t register as it should because of that. She’s also been directed to do a lot of abra-cadabra hand movements that just seem ridiculous. Nancy Allen found a way to have fun with Chris so that you hated her but it wasn’t insufferable as it is with the actress in the remake, who is just a person that no one would like or hang out with. The one improvement is the Betty Buckley role – Judy Greer gets that just right. They filmed their own version of the shocker ending, but replaced it with an ending that’s quite an afterthought and completely lame. The director, when she’s not copying De Palma, does nothing interesting at all, and the score by Marco Beltrami, who’s done good work in the past, is one of those non-thematic droning scores that simply don’t work and don’t elicit emotion. Donaggio’s original does that in spades and it’s one of the reasons we feel for Carrie and understand her. This is, in fact, a textbook as to why you don’t mess with a classic. But they never learn. Something else they apparently didn’t learn – Carrie was turned into one of the most infamous flop musicals ever produced, the subject of much scorn and derision, and then, naturally, the usual suspects proclaiming through the years that it was a misunderstood classic. Um, no. So, they brought it back off-Broadway where the creators reworked things and thought they were suddenly going to have the success they’d never had. But that didn’t happen. So, that was two tries and two flops, one hugely expensive, one less so. But there are a couple of numbers in the show that are pleasant or interesting musically (I really do not like the lyrics at all) and we did the title song in our Kritzerland at 50 show and here is young Jenna Lea Rosen knocking it out of the park and about two miles away.
Well, that was long, wasn’t it? Don’t I have some notes to write? Yesterday was a day. I woke up one hour after I’d fallen asleep, flailing and yelling from some frightmare I’d had. Once up, I began to think about the notes I’d posted two hours earlier and decided that the eight page story of the Anthony Newley revue from last year was too much, and a little too negative so long after the fact. So, I removed it all save for one paragraph. I didn’t fall back asleep till four and then I slept till ten-thirty.
Once up, I printed out orders, answered e-mails, had some telephonic calls, and then I went and had a patty melt and some onion rings. The patty melt was really good. Then I picked up no packages and some mail, then did some banking, then came home, at which point I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Yesterday, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled The Party, starring Peter Sellers and directed by Blake Edwards. I first saw it at a sneak preview at the Village Theater in Westwood, and the laughs were huge and long and loud throughout, up until the last twenty minutes or so, when everything just sort of petered out. I saw it a few more times when it finally came out, and at some point in the early 1970s I was for reasons I can no longer remember, given the tie that Mr. Sellers wears for most of the film – I still have it somewhere in storage. I’ve seen The Party in every home video format and each time I watch it I like it less, save for some classic Blake Edwards bits that always make me laugh. It’s just too lax and too long and there’s one extended sequence where the party guests are dining, where Mr. Sellers actually becomes like an extra and all the funny bits are given to Steve Franken as a drunk waiter. I find that last twenty minutes excruciating to watch. But, I did laugh out loud at those Edwards bits. The transfer is nothing to write home about – the color is fine, but it’s really soft, which is not how it should be. So, I think it’s simply a decade old transfer that should be redone but won’t be because there’s no upside to doing it.
I then watched Carrie. At about eight o’clock I got a text from Juliana Hansen asking where in tarnation was I. I’d completely forgotten we had a meeting at the Smoke House about next year’s ALS benefit show. So, I rushed over there and made it in a record seven minutes. I’d already eaten my main meal, so I just ordered a calorie-free shrimp cocktail and a basically calorie-free artichoke and then a little fruit for dessert. So, almost no calories added to the earlier meal. I pitched my idea for what I thought the show should be, everyone liked it, and then it was embellished upon and got better and I think it will be a really good thing to put together. Unlike last year, we’re not going to give the performers the choice of songs – we’ll choose them and assign them, having some options for them should they not like what we choose. The meeting was fun and then I came right home.
Today, I have some work to do during the day, including finishing the song choices (too damn many to choose from, frankly), and then I’m having dinner with a friend and we’ll probably watch a motion picture afterwards.
Tomorrow I have a lunch meeting with the haineshisway.com theater critic, Rob Stevens, Friday I have a lunch meeting with Kay Cole, and then I have a couple of things to do and see after that.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, choose songs, gather music, hopefully pick up some packages, and then have a dinner and movie. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely topics, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after which I shall not remake the dream nor shall I remake the notes.