False Grit: The Remake of True Grit

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

False Grit

True Grit has been remade, and we true-as-blue-steel John Wayne fans are as apoplectic as Yosemite Sam on a bad-moustache day. Does a composer remake Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg? Does an artist remake Gainsborough’s Blue Boy? Does a photographer remake Ansel Adams’ Moonrise? Does a writer remake Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty?”

No, no, and (Newark, New Jersey) no.

A contemporary businessman remaking a great film is no more an artist than a child with a paint-by-numbers set. The child, at least, can plead youth and innocence and delight in messing up the living-room floor. The adult cannot plead innocence; he is no artist but rather a moral and aesthetic dwarf attempting to delude the customers that he is a reincarnation of Hal Wallis, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Henry Hathaway, or Michael Curtiz.

Given the cliches’ of contemporary movies we know some of the ways this revisionist pastiche of True Grit will be constructed:

1. Interior shots will be sepia-toned and will feature harsh shadows and window light streaming through dust. The convention now is that the insides of houses and offices and courtrooms in the past were all dusty and sepia-toned. Dusty sepia interiors are like, y’know, artsy, and, like, existential, and, like, stuff.

2. The screen will be polluted with the agony of computer graphics instead of honest filmmaking.

3. At some point someone will perform a slo-mo Ninja whirly-through-the-air thing.

4. If Chin Le is in the remake he will not be referred to as a “Chinaman” and will not be a fussy landlord and owner of a general store but rather a stereotypical sage mystic who spends much of the time being spiritual and working on his PhD.

5. Judge Walker will probably be a woman wearing a red power blazer.

What might the looters remake next?

Mary Queen of Scots with Miley Cyrus as Mary and Justin Bieber as Bothwell.

A Man for All Seasons with Mel Gibson as St. Thomas More. During the protracted execution scene the saint’s head falls in slo-slo-mo with lots and lots of blood sloshing everywhere. Julian Assange is the sniveling, treacherous Common Man. More’s daughter Margaret finds peace and harmony in a Zen Buddhist temple with a guru named Shawn while working on her PhD.

Casablanca starring Woody Allen as Rick and Lindsay Lohan as Ilsa. Stone Cold Steve Austin is Major Strasse. Sam (RuPaul) is a sage mystic who spends much of the time being spiritual and working on his PhD.

The Great Escape – the commandant is played by a George Bush impersonator who says “Zis iss a new camp, y’all.” Werner the Ferret is working on his PhD.

The Sound of Music with Oprah Winfrey as Maria. Maria shuffles the seven children off to perpetual daycare, has herself ordained a wymynpriest by Master Bishop Phil, and become a wise spiritual mother working on her PhD. Children’s scenes directed by Roman Polanski.

Becket – Sean Penn is Henry II and Alec Baldwin is Thomas Becket. Al Gore has a cameo as the King of France.

In Which We Serve – The crew of HMS Torin discard all class differences, form a sailors’ soviet, issue a manifesto about global warming, shoot the captain, and flee to Leningrad, where Stalin (charming newcomer Helen Thomas in her breakout role) gives them all medals. Shorty was working on his PhD but gave it up because that would have made him a class enemy.

The 39th Parallel – Villainous Republicans flee across Canada after their global-warming nuclear submarine, the USS EvilBush, on a secret mission to steal all of Canada’s fresh water, is sunk by Rosie O’Donnell flying the long-hidden Avro Arrow.

Lassie Come Home, starring Michael Vick.

Oh, Hollywood, “in what unhappy landscape of disaster did you lose your way?” (Thomas Merton)

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