David Claiborne

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I hesitated to publish a newsletter on April 1 given the internet’s propensity to dispense of all decorum on this day and the following risk that I might not be taken seriously (as if that were different from any other day). But the obsessive need to hold to a deadline won over. Congratulations, you get your newsletter timely, so welcome to the April 2022 edition of author David Claiborne’s newsletter, a monthly publication about west side stories and seeing red.

I watched the remake of West Side Story so you don’t have to.

On Super Bowl Sunday I learned the infamous “they” were releasing a remake of West Side Story. I was immediately aghast. I should expose my preconceptions: West Side Story is one of perhaps only two or three movies ever made I would consider true five-star pictures. It’s in my top three movies of all time, and I couldn’t tell you the names of the other two right now. Besides my opinion on the movie, it was revolutionary in its own right, being one of the first, if not the first musical to use its song and dance to tell the story and further the plot rather than as vaudevillian interludes. If you’ve seen White Christmas, you know what I mean.

So who on earth would want to remake this movie?

Steven Spielberg, it turns out.

I imagine that he’s in a position at this point in his career where there are few people whose opinion he will consider, and fewer who will tell him, “No.” I think his movies have shown a general decline since Saving Private Ryan. That’s not to say he makes bad movies. Only they’re not as sure a thing as his older works. Jaws, E.T., and Close Encounters were themselves revolutionary takes on their genres; Indiana Jones was iconic (we don’t talk about number 4, and don’t tell me they’re making a 5, yeesh); Jurassic Park was a technological marvel for kids who love dinosaurs everywhere; and Schindler’s List will be shown in high school history classrooms for all time. Ready Player One…was mostly a cannon shooting pop culture references at the audience. His filmmaking resume may act as an insulator to criticism leading to what statisticians would call regression to the mean. But I don’t know the man, so perhaps I’m being unfair.

In principle, I don’t have a problem with movies being remade. Plays are remade all the time, after all, and what are movies if not plays made for a larger audience on a larger budget? The difference between a play and a movie, however, is that a movie is (nearly always) preserved for all time. You can pull out your copy of any movie, or rent it on demand these days, and re-watch your favorites. Not so with a play, which are ephemeral things, slightly different with each viewing. Given the permanent nature of the art form, one would hope that when some humans somewhere decide to remake a movie they have a good reason for doing so. Their task, however, is to surpass and improve on the original or risk being accused of making a lazy nostalgia-fueled cash-grab.

Remakes are, however, (nearly) always inferior to their original. The Magnificent Seven was a good remake of Seven Samurai, but it was arguably more of an adaptation for audiences of the west than a straight remake. Further, it had the blessing of the original picture’s director, Akira Kurosawa. I would not argue it was any better or worse than the original for that matter. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) is arguably better than its 1956 predecessor despite having more 70’s pessimism and boobs. Even so, most remakes do nothing more than capitalize on memories of the original for a cheap buck. Some miss the point of the original altogether (I’m looking at you, 2012 Total Recall).

Initially I thought they were modernizing West Side Story, which would be a reasonable excuse to remake one of the best movies of all time. This has been done to Romeo and Juliet, so why not one of R & J’s derivative works?

I was wrong.

This is a straight adaptation of the Broadway musical, only with the dialogue heavily rewritten. Gone are the cultural artifacts that would have marked it indelibly as a work of its time; present are the anachronistic hallmarks of our time vis a transgender insert. There are hardly any “daddy-o’s” to be heard, so you’re left with the hairstyles to tell you this is the fifties. This may be an improvement depending on your tolerance for the cultural idioms of history.

Given my predisposition to hate this movie, what did I think of it?

It’s a capable adaptation.

The acting is good, the choreography and dancing are good, any changes to the music, masterful on its own, can be chalked up to stylistic choices, and the singing is good. In fact, it seems they made a specific effort to ensure the sung diction was clear in areas where many of the original songs were not. Technology has of course advanced over the past sixty years, so the filmmaking in general shows more polish too.

When you’re remaking something great, you must be spectacular. Good is not enough. Perhaps the movie’s only substantive improvement over the 1961 version is the aforementioned attention to diction. That said, the Puerto Rican characters slip between Spanish, Spanglish, and English so often it was difficult to understand. I can’t imagine the issues someone who doesn’t speak Spanish would have interpreting the dialogue, especially given the specific artistic/ideological choice not to include subtitles. Permitting your audience to understand your art is a form of colonialism, didn’t you know?

The 1961 movie re-ordered a few scenes from the stage musical. Most notably the song “Cool,” which takes place after the rumble in the movie, but before it in the play. The wisdom and artistry of the reorganization is apparent immediately on viewing. The Spielberg adaptation sticks to the play’s scene order, however, which may be jarring to someone who has seen the original movie but not the stage musical.

If you like the show, you’ll probably find this movie harmless. It adds nothing significant to the 1961 movie, however. In the process it loses some of the art and synthesis between the music and action, particularly in the transitions, which makes me think its director, Señor Spielbergo, probably didn’t understand the 1961 movie as well as he ought. At least they didn’t write another song for it like they did for Les Mis. Which leads one to ask why this movie needed to be remade, and fairly so.

Seeing Red

Since I’m a writer who’s supposed to be writing about writing, at least ostensibly, let’s talk about writing a little.

Pixar’s new movie, Turning Red, is a harmless piece of straight-to-streaming-service entertainment. I suspect the Great Mouse has seen the writing on the wall and will be doing more of this with future pictures. They did it to Black Widow, after all, which was a big budget Marvel universe movie, albeit a simultaneous release in theaters and on streaming. Whereas a straight-to-video release used to be the mark of poor quality, these days it’s done to attract audiences to streaming platforms. In other words, Red isn’t there because it’s bad. It’s also not great, being that Pixar seems to be suffering from the same return to the mean syndrome as Mr. Spielberg, but it does have character, heart, and some genuinely funny moments.

The plot is that the women of a particular bloodline turn into giant plushy red pandas when they hit puberty if their emotions get out of control. This must be stopped, so we are told, so the mother/daughter antagonist/protagonist duo set about to seal the main character, Mei’s panda away in a piece of jewelry.

The problem with Red is it fails to establish the stakes. We’re told that turning into a red panda is bad, but every time Mei turns into a red panda we’re shown how great it is. Her friends adore her panda form, her frenemies and acquaintances at school think it’s the greatest thing ever, she gets invited to parties as the feature, and she and her friends even turn a profit selling red panda photos and paraphernalia. In other words, the film’s premise is in conflict with its action.

Why is her red panda form bad? Does it become permanent? Will she lose her humanity to her panda form? Will she go feral? Will she eventually lose control? Will she be researched and proctologized? None of the conflict the red panda is supposed to bring about comes through. Quite the opposite. The red panda makes Mei’s life better in nearly every way. Yet the plot insists that the red panda must be sealed away. The moral lesson here seems to be that daughters should listen to their mothers, even if they don’t understand fully, a lesson which the film also undermines by the end, by the way.

This is a problem with internal consistency, which is a problem with the plotting, which is a problem with the writing. It’s always a problem with the writing.

N.B. – they’re now making nostalgia period movies based in the early 2000s. You have permission to feel old.

Various

My editor delivered Part Two’s manuscript to me on March 24th, one month and 7 days before his deadline. I told you he was a professional. That means it’s my turn to be a professional now and get revising. In the meantime, I pursued smaller projects to fill the gap between big projects. Those small projects will most likely only see the light of day if the earth stops rotating.

I have been posting chapters from the audiobook for Planet Mission: Part One on YouTube for free each week. There are only a couple more chapters to go before the whole thing is up. Take advantage now, because I probably won’t do this for Part Two, but that’s a topic for a future newsletter. You can subscribe on YouTube to listen to the audiobook for free here.

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