Are You There, Hollywood? It's Me-- Logic

All right, Hollywood, listen up.

Conan the Barbarian-- a surprise hit from 1980 in which Arnold Schwarzenegger grunts, yells, sticks his sword into a giant snake's jaw, and learns English as he goes. Followed by a generally disliked 1984 sequel and a 2011 remake that critics are hacking to pieces like Conan's family.

Fright Night-- a masterfully campy 1985 horror flick starring Chris Sarandon as a suave vampire, William Ragsdale as an overly imaginative teenage outcast who knows his secret, and Roddy McDowall as the late-night creature feature host who somehow gets roped into destroying the vampire. Followed by a generally disliked 1988 sequel and a 2011 remake with Collin Farrell, who in addition to Bullseye and Alexander the Great, now has "vampire" on his resume.

Planet of the Apes-- a cyclical film series reaching from 1968 to 1973, much beloved by fans of classic sci-fi, technically impressive but unrealistic ape makeup, and Charlton Heston. Followed by a merchandising empire, cartoons, a very short-lived 1974 TV series, and a 2001 "remake" by professional weirdo Tim Burton, which in turn was followed by the digitized 2011 "sequel/prequel/pseudo-remake" or whatever the heck you call Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Well, listen, Hollywood, you've obviously had your hands full this year dredging up every decent movie ever made and reworking it into something new, uninspiring, unoriginal, and generally horrendous and disrespectful. (I just want to say, I think it's hilarious that the weekend Conan and Fright Night opened, literary adaptation The Help was tops at the box office-- thank you, people of America!) So let me save you a little time. There is one movie you are not remaking. Period.

I've let you get off with mere stern lectures with all you've done before-- reworking Fall of the Roman Empire into the dull and brainless Gladiator. Hiring the screenwriter of the brilliant 1976 supernatural thriller The Omen to remake his own masterpiece just to cash in on the 6/6/06 "event"! Well, that's fine and dandy. And to be honest, Conan the Barbarian wasn't even that great in 1980.

But keep your money-grubbing paws off Poltergeist.

Poltergeist-- a wonderful 1982 blockbuster in which crazy supernatural phenomena plague an ordinary American family-- a dad who watches too much football, a long-suffering mom, a teenage girl annoyed by everything, a little girl who sees weird things, and a tween boy who constantly gets on the nerves of his sisters. Steven Spielberg executive-produced, so the film had the same genuinely affecting family relationship drama of movies like Jaws and E.T., but it was directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), so it was extremely creepy. It was scored by none other than Jerry Goldsmith (the Omen trilogy, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Planet of the Apes, etc.), who got nominated for a certain award for it, and in addition to the standard eerie, ominous and suspenseful music, it also featured one of the sweetest, most astoundingly beautiful themes ever written for a motion picture, the lullaby-like "Carol Anne's Theme" (Carol Anne was the little girl).

Well, what else can I say? It had jaw-dropping special effects (which still look pretty good, I must say), not to mention one of the weirdest people ever to mosey out of a screenwriter's imagination: Tangina, the medium with the helium drawl. And, sitting here, listening to "Carol Anne's Theme," I have this sickening feeling that I'm about to be seeing a trailer for the new Poltergeist.

I don't think I could handle that. Because here's how it would happen. The eldest daughter would be played by a Kardashian. Disney Channel and Nickelodeon would supply players for the roles of the other two kids. The score would either consist of the madcap musical shenanigans of Danny Elfman, or they'd hire some atmospheric hack to do it (Tyler Bates and Marco Beltrami, come on down!) or just use horrible pop and rock songs. The storm scene would no longer feature little Robbie and Carol Anne walking in on their parents blazing up-- they'd be walking in on the most inappropriate sex scene since The Room.

And 3-D-- of course, it would be in 3-D.

So that tears it. There's no way you could conjure up a more familial brood than the original Freelings. No way you could wind up with a score that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Goldsmith's. No way you could find another child actress to imbue Carol Anne with the sweetness and depth that were so effortless to young Heather O'Rourke. And besides, O'Rourke died just after finishing her role in the unfavorable Poltergeist III, at the age of twelve. So replacing her-- much like finding another Superman after Christopher Reeve-- is just, well... horrible!

Which means I just have to ask. What is the point of pumping so much money into this industry if all they're going to do is give us what we've already seen-- which was much, much better the first time around anyway?

An Exciting Time to Be Alive

Why waste your time in a college classroom learning about the past when you could be out experiencing the present and the future?

For one thing, college is ultimately cheaper.

For two things, the present is extremely scary, and the future-- well, the human race seems to be skyrocketing off the tracks like that train in Spider-Man 2.

But really, this is probably the most exciting time to be alive since the late 60s. I used to be totally enamored with the Vietnam Era-- a time when a massive, multifaceted juggernaut of civil rights movements begun, a time when the people of America finally, after almost two hundred years of "the same," finally allowed themselves to be different and, in so doing, advanced civilization a few centuries in the short space of a few summers (you know what I'm talking about-- hippies, women's lib, gay liberation, antiwar movements). I would love the music, the fiction, the poetry, the films, oh, dear, the films (especially those amazing epic roadshow movies we're not lucky enough to have around anymore!) and I would think, Why wasn't I born then?

So that I could be born and live in this world. Those movements that started in the 60s didn't bloom and then suddenly die. Many of them still live on and are still necessary. And I'm still not sure what to make of it, but something sparked in my human imagination when it seemed like the entire Middle East turned upside down with revolution after revolution. The hippies, the women's libbers, the gay libbers, the antiwar folks, and so on still have so much to achieve, and I really have a feeling that so many exciting things are going to happen in the next ten years or so.

Our popular music is garbage now. We've lost the ability to march with dignity. And instead of being entangled in one horrid international conflict, we are now hopelessly entangled in three. Fortunately, 60s fashion died in the 70s. Fortunately, the spirit of social equality and community didn't. And while I'd give anything to inject some Sand Pebbles, some Hawaiis, some Doctor Zhivagos and some Fiddlers on Roofs into this MTV/Tarantino-inspired cinema culture, I'm really glad to be alive at this time in history.

Okay, cinema, maybe just the occasional Ryan's Daughter?

(If you don't get these movie references, feel free to look them up.)