Glob-a-log

(Yes, he really does love you for your brains…)

Dr Samuel Johnson once famously noted that if a man was tired of London, he was tired of life.

Though I am not particularly tired of life, I can’t say London does all that much for me. Still, there are things that do make me very tired - not to the point of wanting to lie down and die, mind you but more to the extent of wanting to pick up an Uzi and go shoot a few Hollywood executives:

“It is a truth commercially acknowledged that Jane Austen’s high-spirited heroines can be recast as Hollywood brats or Bollywood sirens, wittily navigating the eternal perils of class, romance and unworthy men. Few challenges, however, are as unusual as the latest foe facing Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice – a plague of the undead sent to reduce the picturesque villages of Longbourn and Meryton to smouldering ruins.

Hollywood studios are bidding to turn a radical reworking of Austen’s most popular book, now called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a parody to be published in April, into a blockbuster movie. Desperate for new ideas, studio chiefs hope “P&P&Z” will mark the bloody birth of a feral offspring of classic British literature: “monster-lit”.”

Now, normally, I don’t care all that much what Hollywood is up to - especially when they are doing yet another remake, or extreme make-over of some much loved book. As a famous writer (whose name I can’t come up with now…) once said: “They can’t spoil any of my books. The books are still there.” That’s true, of course. As it is true that, so far, no Hollywood studio has ever kidnaped people at gun point to make them watch a movie.

Still, there is something quite repugnant about Hollywood’s ever more desperate search for new formulae for blockbusters.

Anyway, this latest bit of nonsense had me wondering about other scenarios. I mean, if we really want to plough that ‘Is nothing sacred?’ field even deeper and further, what more could we dig up?

Without thinking all that particularly hard, I came up with the following three concepts:

1) A new Anne Frank movie, that also functions as a lesbian coming of age story - with full front nudity, of course

2) A reworking of ET, where our friendly alien discovers a Satanic pedophile ring

3) Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, transported to and set against the tribal slaughter in Ruanda (to a score of ABBA songs)

Ah yes, so many stories to rape and maim and so little time…

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m off to daydream about Jane Austen’s mister Darcy, turned zombie, scooping out the brains of our plucky heroine, while crooning Charles Aznavour’s ‘She’.

Before I go though, this obvious question to all (or, at least, anyone) still reading this post: What would be your idea for the ultimate and most tasteless exploitation remake?

I’d be curious to hear what you come up with.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 15:29 and is filed under Arts & Ents, Columns, Lists, Satire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.