Subject: REMAKE by Connie Willis

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper)
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 22:51:36 GMT

REMAKE by Connie Willis
        Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-37437, 1995, 176pp, US$11.95
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper

     In the future, Hollywood will be able to do even more amazing
things with computer graphics than they can now.  The patching up of
scenes in THE CROW after Brandon Lee's death will be nothing compared
to remaking BEN-HUR with Sylvester Stallone--even though Stallone is
dead.  Or if you prefer, you can go to the Happy Endings Theater and
see a version of CASABLANCA where Victor is killed by the Nazis and
Rick and Ilsa can go off together.  (Well, Hollywood would probably
think this was a happy ending.)  But the flip side of this is that no
one is making NEW movies anymore.  The best an aspiring actor can hope
for is to have his or her face digitally superimposed over someone
else's in an already existing movie.

     Our first-person narrator makes a living editing old movies.  His
current job is to edit out all references to "AS"s (addictive
substances), making this story at least a cousin to Willis's "Ado."
But he has also met an aspiring dancer, one who wants to *really* dance
in the movies, not just have her face digitally combined with someone
else's body.  Where this quest leads her and the narrator is the story
of this book.  (By he way, this is a novel, according to my word count
estimate, rather than the novella it was described as at ConAdian--and
the price is correspondingly higher than they said also.)

     Willis shows a real love for old movies similar to what she
displayed in her short story "Miracle."  Does it seem as though there are
a lot of themes recycled here?  Or is this also a self-referential joke
on the idea of remakes?  Or maybe it's just that Willis uses the
constructs she is most comfortable with to tell her story.  The
problem, I suspect, is that readers who are not as familiar with old
movies, and in particular old musicals, may not enjoy it as much as
those who are.

     Then again, Willis's understanding of movies may not be that of
others either.  She seems to say that the musical died in 1965.  That
is, the first-person narrator claims that Michael Caine said that "the
musical had kicked off in 1965" (although later it is said by someone
who merely looks like Michael Caine).  This implies that Willis, or
Caine, or the Caine look-alike think that FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, THE
ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, GREASE, ALL THAT JAZZ, FAME,
VICTOR/VICTORIA, A CHORUS LINE, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, or any number
of recent Disney animated films aren't musicals.  (And that's only
talking American films.  In India, *everything* is a musical.  In
Jaipur, I saw a musical remake of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE.
After that, almost nothing that Willis imagines would surprise me in
if came to pass.)  I would be more inclined to say that the musical
has developed; more recent musicals use the music in a very different
way than older ones.  Just compare CABARET with movies from the 1930s
which used nightclub numbers, or FAME with 42ND STREET.

     There is also some sloppy editing here.  A character called
"Heada" (as an intentional misspelling of "Hedda") is accidentally
called "Hedda" once or twice, someone should tell the proof-reader
about the use of the semi-colon as the separator in lists where the
items containing commas within them, and there is at least one line
completely missing from the top of page 131.

     In spite of all these complaints, I found the book a moderately
enjoyable read.  I suppose I've started to expect every Willis story to
be deep, insightful, and riveting, and I've forgotten that she does a
good job at just telling a story as well.  REMAKE serves to remind me
of that, and to bring back some of the magic the movies used to have.
Maybe I'll go watch CASABLANCA--in black and white, with the original
ending.

%A   Willis, Connie 
%T   Remake
%I   Bantam Spectra
%C   New York
%D   January 1995
%G   ISBN 0-553-37437
%P   176pp
%O   trade pb, US$11.95

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
"As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as 
 certain about anything as were the people who built this place."
            -Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg on her visit to Auschwitz