Remaking the Silver Screen

America's love affair with Hollywood... and Hollywood's love affair with repeating the past.

By Topher Kandik

Not only has the American Film Institute set up an East Coast shop (don't worry -- National Theater programming at the KenCen will continue), but it has done it as a remake.

Courtesy of the citizens of Montgomery County, AFI has taken the failed shell of a movie theater, updated the technology, and remade it as close to the original as possible. Here's how the script reads.

The Making of a Remake

Silver Spring, which was a nothing town in the middle of nowheresville until a few years ago, has now added a chapter to the now-century-long story of American audiences spending money on film.

Part of a $400 million public/private investment in the revitalization of the downtown area, the Silver Theater is an eye-catching rebuild of a failed shopping center 60 years ago. Back then, the building was the first in the city to have a parking garage, and folks came to see movies in the humid summers because it was air-conditioned.

Now, besides a/c, the Silver Theater and Cultural Center boasts three theater spaces (a 75-, 200-, and a 400-seater), a tiny café, a conference room, and a retail outlet -- all with the technology to impress even the most serious movie nerd. The theaters are designed for the, um, "modern American" with enough seat room to support the averagely obese. The space has been impressively thought through and improves not just movie viewing, but the entire business of movies by recasting John Eberson's original 1930s-era art-deco design to contemporary needs, including business conferences. It's a destination place for movies or business -- or both.

Eberson's notable pedigree as a designer evolved from construction work to designing theaters to designing movie houses after he escaped from Romanian prison and settled in the U.S. Ah, the American Dream. Ultimately, he landed a job designing the Silver with public money as part of the New Deal.

Eberson's idea was to give the theater a nautical theme: Carpet patterns suggest waves; wallpaper features tropical birds; and a mast/marquee out front and ship-like side lights (more mammarian than marine). Overall, it's an uninspired albeit consistent theme. The idea is to use the nautical theme to transport audiences to an exotic locale. Not sure why, though. The air conditioning, if not the original movies, seemed fine enough reason for Silver Springians to check out of 1940s' post-War reality for an hour or two.

Today, the AFI's programming offers a better excuse to check out of post-war reality. In April alone, you could see the classic "The Godfather Trilogy" (you don't have to stay for the third) and Leni Riefenstahl's "Olympia" (you don't have to root for the Germans). You can see Americana, such as Robert Mugge's (an AFI favorite son) "Hellhound on My Trail." And, you can check out the latest cinematic offerings from film festivals, premieres, and re-releases.

Not all movies, luckily, are American. Check out the schedule for yourself. The programming is as impressive as it is un-Hollywood.

Our Cinematic Forefathers Check In

But Hollywood is an easy target. Since artists first caught motion in pictures, the movie world has vacillated between art and business. Hollywood has embraced movies as business, and, in turn, the American public has reciprocated with a seemingly insatiable appetite for spending its money on movies -- regardless of content. Hollywood makes a vapid $500 million picture (say, "Titanic"), and we see it. No matter what.

Many Hollywood movies, in fact, shutter substantial content because provoking thought hinders Hollywood priorities -- blowing stuff up and/or making us cry (depending on if we are male or female). So, it is with the bottom line in mind that Hollywood has embarked on its latest money-grab. The remake has played a part in movies for some time, but it's just hitting its stride with general artistic disaster and fair to middling financial success.

Are Movies Remakeable?

Consider this list of remakes often involving considerable talent: "Psycho" (1960/1998), Gus Van Sant takes an imaginative whack with this shot-by-shot remake; "Godzilla" (1954/1998), yawn, a bust; "The Mummy" (1932/2000), poor Brendan Fraser -- he means so well; "Shaft" (1971/2000), John Singelton makes a pleasing attempt; "Planet of the Apes" (1968/2001), Tim Burton churns out a laughable remake of a laughable movie; "Ocean's 11," an easy-on-the-eyes remake of the rat pack movie -- the rat pack themselves remade "Gunga Din" (1939) before remaking movies was popular. The list goes on, but try to think of a movie that needed to and has been remade with any degree of adroitly.

Theater is a form more suited to the remake. With words as its medium, theater is written to be reproduced. But film's medium is not fluid and malleable words, but images that leave a lasting, stand-alone impression independent of context.

Words: mind. Images: emotion. This is especially true for Hollywood. A Hollywood movie provokes us, through use of images, to feel good (see "Hoosiers") or to cry (see "Beaches," I'm told). Think about it this way: When someone kicks ass or gets the girl, you know how to feel, regardless of what happened previously. But when Lear exclaims to Cordelia:

No, no, no, no! Come, lets away to prison;
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies…

we process the imagery in its context to figure out what a beautifully tragic figure Lear has become. This isn't the stuff of pyrotechnic wizardry or the catalyst for a good Hollywood cry.

Perhaps film is the artistic form least-suited to the remake. Garage bands for decades have performed cover songs as homage. Hip-hop music borrows freely from previously recorded sounds and traditions. In my personal favorite riff on the remake, Jorge Luis Borges pens, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote." In this tale, the writer endeavors to rewrite "Don Quixote" and succeeds by rewriting the novel word by word -- in its entirety. That's good stuff.

Hollywood Reloads and Reshoots

The AFI's own press kit simplistically states, "Our notions of history, human relationships, scientific exploration, psychology, art, and even ethics and morality are influenced by watching movies." What, then, is the lesson to learn from all these horrendous remakes?

Despite the catalogue of klunky precedents, it makes good business sense. There is little risk in the remake. The script is already there (and perhaps owned by the studio); you can easily find prettier faces to plug into key roles and to ensure crowds; and you can tell audiences how to feel (since they probably haven't seen the original, anyway).

Humans aren't risk-takers either. Given a choice, we opt for the old and familiar (even if it's bad, like "Planet of the Apes") over the new and unfamiliar. It's safe haven. Maybe, though, by remaking old movies, we are expressing dissatisfaction with the images of our messy past. Maybe we harbor the ultimately dangerous desire to take the past, dust it off, put prettier faces in the roles, and, if necessary, give it a happy ending. Maybe, under the guise of homage, we know our endeavors will fail, and we are subconsciously fulfilling the need to defile our past.

Will we continually refuse to recognize the past and repeat it? Or does the Silver Theater -- same lame art-deco face, better programming -- take us in the new direction of thoughtful reexamination of our own traditions?

Maybe AFI is on to something, here, but doesn't that story sound familiar?

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