Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
First, a quick correction. Johnny Butane, one of the mutants over at CHUD appendage Creature Corner, wrote to let me know that my rage about Ryan Phillippe being cast as Leatherface in the new Michael Bay-produced remake of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was misplaced, since it was an April Fool’s Day joke that got picked up as real news by several other outlets.
Thank freakin’ god.
I also want to follow up on one of the other stories I wrote last time. I brought up the particular case of Vertigo Entertainment, a company I was unfamiliar with.
I was pretty stern in my disapproval of part of the business model as described by Michael Fleming in his original article. Vertigo is the company founded by Roy Lee and Doug Davison that has been busily acquiring the international ancillary rights to films from various Asian markets, setting them up to be remade by the major American studios even before a western audience has a chance to see the original films.
Much to my surprise, I got an e-mail from Roy Lee, spurred initially by my complaint that I hadn’t seen IL MARE, the film that was announced by VARIETY, triggering my article in the first place. Roy offered to let me see the original if I was interested, and said he’d like to talk to me.
Normally, when I write a piece in which I’m critical of someone, or I raise pointed questions about a project in which they are involved, they end up becoming way too defensive way too quick. I didn’t know enough about Vertigo last time to condemn them or not. I read that one Michael Fleming piece, and I reacted by asking questions. By wondering aloud.
And Roy Lee took the time to answer. He invited me to drop by the Vertigo offices in the Miramax building, and was so unflappably friendly that I decided that I had to go over and take a look at what he was up to. I figured at the very least, I’d get a copy of a Korean film I was interested in seeing. Sounded okay to me.
It was a Sunday afternoon when I managed to find the time to steal away. The building was pretty much empty. Roy greeted me dressed casually, to say the least. He’s young, one of those guys who could be anywhere from 25 to 40, but who still looks like a college guy just kicking it. As soon as I was in the office, he slapped a stack of five movies on the desk. I recognized a few of them as films that have either been set up already for remakes (IL MARE, CHAOS) or that have been generating buzz already (DARK WATER).
Actually, CHAOS was in the process of being set up as I was there, talking with Roy. He told me that Robert De Niro and Benecio Del Toro were both attached to the film, playing a man whose wife is kidnapped and the kidnappers, respectively. The original, KAOSU, was directed by Hideo Nakata, the same director who made DARK WATER and RING. The remake of RING, of course, is set for release later this year by Dreamworks. KAOSU, released originally in Japan in 1999, was pretty much an experiment by the director, a DV feature that didn’t really have a third act because it was never fully finished. Even so, the set up managed to intrigue Universal enough to get it picked up. There’s some interesting writers circling the property now, and we’ll see what creative team ends up eventually attached.
In the meantime, Roy’s gearing up with another film property that is actually about to be taken out and offered to the studios, and I was given a peek at the material early. Writer/director Stephen Susco, who is working with Roy to develop this mysterious and disturbing project, showed up to work on the translated subtitles for the presentation tape that’s going out this week sometime, and after he described the basic premise of the piece to me, he invited me to sit and watch a few sequences.
I’m still not sure if I’m glad I did or not.
Hiroshi Takahashi was the screenwriter of the original RING, and he’s been busy working on a television show. Only two episodes of it exist so far, but Vertigo Entertainment stepped in to work with Takahashi to not only develop it into an original Japanese feature, but also to co-develop the American version at the same time.
The project is called GRUDGE.
And chances are, it will fuck you up.
”We want to do something that you can’t shake off, that you can’t just forget about after two hours in the theater,” Susco said to me, his enthusiasm infectious. He’s a long time horror fan, just like Roy is, and as I spoke with them about their approach to horror, I was greatly encouraged.
The premise is simple: there’s a house in a Japanese neighborhood where something took place, something so awful that there is an energy that hangs about, a malevolent rage that has no focus. It’s so toxic, so violently furious, that anger begins to spread through the neighborhood like a virus, causing truly disturbing incidents to take place with anyone who has even a glancing interaction with the house. There’s no Freddy Krueger, no wisecracks, nothing campy or silly.
Instead, there are sequences of stark, brutal horror that shocked me with their intensity. I saw two scenes from the film, and even out of context, they were enough to rattle me. If someone is smart enough to give Susco a low budget and simply let him go away and remake this movie with an unknown American cast, he could well come up with something that will scare people in a way they aren’t used to being scared by a movie. This has a chance at being something truly, memorably terrifying.
”But wait,” you say. “Wasn’t Roy Lee the enemy just last week?” No. Not really. I was deeply concerned about the idea that none of the films he’s optioned would ever make their way into release in the U.S., but that’s not true at all. Instead, Lee seems to genuinely believe that his remakes will pave the way for viewers to seek out and see the originals, which will have various releases, all depending on name recognition.
I ended up talking with Michael Barker, one of the heads of Sony Pictures Classics, when I was at the Ebertfest this past weekend (my travel diary is forthcoming), and one of the things we talked about was the real costs entailed in any sort of release, even a limited one, and the returns that exist for certain niche markets. It infuriates fans of Asian films to hear “there’s no audience” from distributors regarding their beloved originals, but in some cases... hell, in most cases... it’s true. There have been some great, brilliant Asian films that have gotten decent releases in recent memory, that had excellent reviews, that ended up simply making no money. It takes a strong marketing campaign to even get the audience to recognize the title of a foreign film in many cases.
With GRUDGE, I want to see this remake happen. Yes, it’s true. There are remakes I’m interested in. I don’t think they are without merit across the board. I think GRUDGE could be brilliant as an American movie. It’s going to be offered to Dimension first (Vertigo has a first-look deal with them), but after that, Vertigo is free to take it anywhere. And I’m sure it’s going to get snapped up. I hope so. I would love to sit in a theater and watch an American audience try to deal with the images I saw. There was that genuine shock of transgression that I get so rarely from horror films made by pretty much anyone except David Cronenberg.
Later this week, I’m going to do a much larger “Remake THIS!!” with reviews of some of the originals that Lee is working with, including CHAOS, DARK WATER, and a tearjerker that may just be the most effective weeping machine ever committed to celluloid. I’ll be talking with Roy Lee and some of the other writers/directors involved with his projects (hopefully), and I’ll be digging into the mystery behind THE NAKED JUNGLE remake at Alphaville, and the reason Roy Lee was startled to see it mentioned directly above his film in my last column.
Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
