Steven Spielberg, the world's most successful living filmmaker, recently announced that he's doing a remake of "Harvey," the 1950 Jimmy Stewart comedy, with that project bumping aside, for the time being, Spielberg's involvement as a director in a remake of "Matt Helm," the 1970s TV series that is being developed as a feature at Paramount.How depressing it was to think of Spielberg remaking a Jimmy Stewart movie that simply does not need to get remade. Well, hallelujah, looks like you can stick a fork in this bad idea:
Steven Spielberg has withdrawn from “Harvey.” He spent the past half year developing the pic, his first directing vehicle for the reconstituted DreamWorks.I guess we can say that the rabbit... er... died.
Spielberg’s first choice was Tom Hanks, but the actor who is often regarded as a modern day Stewart wanted no part of taking over a role played by the iconic star. Spielberg and Fox spent several months courting Robert Downey Jr. While the star didn’t commit, he made suggestions on rewrites of the Jonathan Tropper script. He and Spielberg never found themselves in creative sync on the script, and the director finally called the whole thing off.
Seriously it's a classic, it's high concept, everybody would have had a fun time making the movie, they all would have made boodles of cash... hell, there may have even been a decent script in the works. But at least Tom Hanks had the clarity of mind to say something like, "Hey, people may compare me to Jimmy Stewart, but why would I actually want to play a role that would put me square in his shadow?"
Clearer heads prevail. Nothing to see here, so please hop along...
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4 comments:
They should stop with all the remakes.
I'm afraid of waking up one day and hearing about the inevitable Blade Runner remake.
Scott, I'm curious as to why you call Harvey high concept. To me, it defies that type of definition b/c it's much more multi-layered.
@daveed: In my view, high concept does not translate necessarily into something that is not "multilayered." Romeo & Juliet is high concept. Jaws is high concept. High concept as in a plot that can be summarized in one or two sentences (that's basically the 'traditional' take on HC / I have my own take on it which is a bit more complex).
So how is Harvey a high concept? "Guy goes through life with his best friend: An invisible 6-foot tall rabbit."
Now I will grant you that there have been tons and tons of crappy high concept movies, and that has tended to besmirch high concept as equivalent to crap. But it's just not the case.
I'll try to remember to repost that thing I wrote on high concept, basically that a strong high concept has three additional aspects (other than reduceable to 1-2 lines):
* Strong high concept has a grab.
* Strong high concept has an audience.
* Strong high concept has an indicator.
I guess I'm not clear on what exactly 'high concept' means...
To me, there's a lot more going on in Harvey than just a man with a imaginary 6-ft rabbit friend. That makes a high concept statement not quite a fitting description of the film, as opposed to for say, Jaws: small town sheriff battles killer shark.
It's been a while since I've seen Harvey, but I recall how sorry I felt for the main character. Probably because I saw Harvey as escaping from some dark hurt in his past -- through booze, benign ignorance, and fantasy.
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