Writer's Block: First and only
May. 1st, 2010 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorka[Error: unknown template qotd]
That's actually two questions. Which one do you want me to answer?
Question #1: Is there a film that you think is perfect in its original form?
No, and that's a stupid question. No work of art in any medium is ever 'perfect,' and thank the Gods for that. If there were, what point would there ever be in creating another work in that medium? Everything has nooks and crannies and oddities, moments of schmutz or off-timing. Moreover, there are things that one viewer sees as flaws that are part of the art for another - dealing with the time limitations of scenes and film reels, for instance, or how credits sequences are handled. There are some films that are very, very good. There is no perfect film, and that's a blessing. (This is entirely aside from my insistence that 'perfect' is a bad concept, at least outside of mathematics, and we'd be better off without it for the most part.)
Question #2: Is there a film that you think should never be remade?
Yes. Plan 9 From Outer Space and Manos: Hands of Fate are epic in their awfulness, self-unaware parodies of what films should be, and I think they deserve to stand as such without anyone trying to 'fix' them by remaking them. Not that I thought anyone really wanted to do so.
The original compound question seems to be intimating that it's good films rather than spectacularly bad ones that should not be remade, and that strikes me as silly. If it was good the first time, why not give another generation of actors, directors, and effects artists a crack at the same story? We don't claim that, just because a particular Broadway run of a given play was fantastic, it should never be staged again. I collect cover tunes, and I'm not the only one. I don't see why film should be different from theater or music in that regard. (But then, I'm a fan of derivative and transformative works in general.)
That's actually two questions. Which one do you want me to answer?
Question #1: Is there a film that you think is perfect in its original form?
No, and that's a stupid question. No work of art in any medium is ever 'perfect,' and thank the Gods for that. If there were, what point would there ever be in creating another work in that medium? Everything has nooks and crannies and oddities, moments of schmutz or off-timing. Moreover, there are things that one viewer sees as flaws that are part of the art for another - dealing with the time limitations of scenes and film reels, for instance, or how credits sequences are handled. There are some films that are very, very good. There is no perfect film, and that's a blessing. (This is entirely aside from my insistence that 'perfect' is a bad concept, at least outside of mathematics, and we'd be better off without it for the most part.)
Question #2: Is there a film that you think should never be remade?
Yes. Plan 9 From Outer Space and Manos: Hands of Fate are epic in their awfulness, self-unaware parodies of what films should be, and I think they deserve to stand as such without anyone trying to 'fix' them by remaking them. Not that I thought anyone really wanted to do so.
The original compound question seems to be intimating that it's good films rather than spectacularly bad ones that should not be remade, and that strikes me as silly. If it was good the first time, why not give another generation of actors, directors, and effects artists a crack at the same story? We don't claim that, just because a particular Broadway run of a given play was fantastic, it should never be staged again. I collect cover tunes, and I'm not the only one. I don't see why film should be different from theater or music in that regard. (But then, I'm a fan of derivative and transformative works in general.)
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Date: 2010-05-01 10:23 pm (UTC)This is the brain I am cursed with.