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Londo - Bialystock?

J

Joseph DeMartino

Moderator
I was just watching The Producers (the original 1968 Mel Brooks film with Gene Wilder as Leo Bloom and Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock) and was struck by how much the relationship between Bialystock and Bloom resembles that between Londo and Vir. It even includes this line:

"I assume you're making those cartoon noises to attract my attention. Am I correct in my assumption, you fish-faced enemy of the people?"

Then, of course, there's Max's hungering for his past days of glory and his willingness to do anything to regain them. It really is an amusing parallel and I'm surprised I never made the connection before. I've never seen the Broadway musical version, or the film based on it, and I wonder if the resemblance is as obvious with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick (or any of their replacements or the road company versions) as it is with Mostel and Wilder.

What does everyone else think? Am i seeing things or do real echoes of The Producers inform Babylon 5 is some small way?

Regards,

Joe
 
Maybe that's why Vir always reminded me of Zero Mostel. Maybe I got the connection inconsciously.
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Or cross-connection. :) That is interesting given that Vir would figure in my theory as Leo Bloom, the Gene Wilder character. I watched the trailer for the Lane/Broderick version last night on the DVD last night found them less reminicent of Mostel and Wilder than Londo and Vir. :) The curse of recreating iconic performances is that you don't want to fall into doing an impersonation of the original actor, but you also don't want to reject good acting choices just because the other guy made the same ones. It can be darned tricky, so I wasn't really surprised at the different feel the "new" team had. (Also they honed their version of these character on stage for years, and then had to adapt those performances for film, so changes were inevitable.)

An example of this kind of this was a "live" TV production of Mr. Roberts from many years ago. Robert Hayes was just lost in the lead role, having none of the gravitas of Henry Fonda, Charles Durning realized there was no hope of making the captain his own role so he just frankly did a Jimmy Cagney impression, and Kevin Bacon was so intent on not imitating anything Jack Lemmon did in the film that he managed the minor miracle of making Ensign Pulver dull and totally unfunny. :D

Regards,

Joe
 
That's why I generally have not interest in remakes. Yeah the Producers was a cute flick, but this obsession that people have over it, and the constant remakes just boggles my mind.
 
Well, there haven't exactly been "constant" remakes. :) There was the original film, which was fairly successful in its day and which then became something of a cult film.

There was the adapation of the film to the stage as a musical. (And the original, despite the stage bits that were part of the show-within-the-film, was not a musical.) The stage musical became a huge hit on its own merits as a musical comedy, ran on Broadway for years.

Finally there was the adaptation of the stage play into a musical film.

So the original film has never actually been remade. (Although in an odd way it is, itself, a remake. Brooks originally tried to write the story as a novel, but friends in the publishing business told him that there was too much dialogue and too little prose, and that his manuscript was really a play, not a book. So he rewrote it as a stage play. But a theatrical producer told him that there were too many scene changes and that what he'd really written was a film script - something he'd never intended or even thought about doing. Not knowing that the business isn't supposed to work that way Brooks found a producer, secured financing and convinced the producer that he - who had never directed anything - should direct what was also the first screenplay he'd ever written because it would be cheaper. He already knew the scenes inside and out and wouldn't waste a lot of time figuring out how to shoot it. The rest, as they say, is history.)

I do generally dislike remakes as well. It is the nature of plays that there is never a single, definitive version of them. There are only different productions and they have to be staged anew for a new audience to see them. But a movie is a single work of craft (when one is really good, art) that can be watched over and over by different audiences forever - just as a novel can be read by different readers. If a movie is good, why remake it? Why not just watch the original? If a movie is bad why remake it? Why would anyone want to see a bad movie? The only real excuse for remakes is when a good idea is badly handled or imperfectly realized (because the technology wasn't up to the job, or the wrong actors or director got involved in a project.) I can see remaking a mediocre film that had the germ of a good idea to try to make it better. Or taking a classic situation and taking it a new direction (a sort of literary version of those historical "What Ifs?" the SF writers are so fond of.) A Perfect Murder was an example of this. A frank remake of Dial "M" for Murder it took the same initial murder-plot-gone-awry set-up and then changed a couple of key plot developments and character relationships to build and equally suspenseful and plausible 2nd and 3rd act playing off the ideas (and the audience expectations) from the original film. I thought it worked. But there is no reason in the world to remake (or attach a sequel to) a film like Casablanca. The original is pretty much perfect. You're not going to improve on it or add to it. Just leave it alone.

But I consider adaptations into other forms to be a completely different animal than a remake.

Regards,

Joe
 
Adaptations into other forms is good if it makes sense. Scooby Doo the movie, for example- maybe not so good.

The chemistry between Mastel and Wilder is just so great- Lane and Broderick aping on it kinda feels like if Kenny G cute a record where he plays Charlie Parker tunes.

And now Lane & Broderick are doing The Odd Couple on stage- so is that the new thing, L&B redo everything? It just feels so... forced.

Why would anyone want to see a bad movie?
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Well, taking this question completely out of context ( :) ), it can be a lot of fun depending on why the movie is bad.
 
I "I assume you're making those cartoon noises to attract my attention. Am I correct in my assumption, you fish-faced enemy of the people?"
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That's funny, about two weeks ago I watched The Producers from the start (I usually catch it in the middle these days) and when I heard that line I instantly thought of "What do you want, you moon-faced assassin of joy?"

II've always considered Vir to be channeling Woody Allen (without the sexual obsessions).
 
But I consider adaptations into other forms to be a completely different animal than a remake.

Regards,

Joe

[/quote]

What immediately springs to my mind is "SEVEN SAMURI" and "MAGNIFICENT SEVEN". From Japanese Samuri to American Western.
 
But there is no reason in the world to remake (or attach a sequel to) a film like Casablanca. The original is pretty much perfect. You're not going to improve on it or add to it. Just leave it alone.
Click to expand...
Apparently, there were discussions of sequels for years. They would have followed Rick and Louis (Bogart's and Claude Raines' characters) and left Ilsa (Bergman's character) out of it. However, nobody ever came up with a treatment / script that the principals found acceptable / worthy.

They did have the good sense to turn down a sequel that wasn't good enough.
 
Actually there were two - count 'em, two - TV adapations of the film, one (1955) a sequel about Rick and Louis, the other (1983) a prequel. David Soul (the original Starsky and Hutch) played Rick in the latter.

Gee, I hope nobody is reading this while eating or drinking. :D

Regards,

Joe
 
I have heard of those (though not seen them, beyond one or two stills of Soul as Rick). And, yes, those were horrible ideas from the start.

But I was referring to movie sequels intended to star Bogart and Raines.
 
Or, they could have just cast Claude in Passage to Marseille, along with Bogart. Hmmm... wait just a minute! They DID cast Claude Raines in Passage to Marseille!

Okay, if they had done an actual sequel, I think I would have HAD to like it as much as if JMS made a B5 sequel of G'Kar and Lyta's adventures...
 
Lyta can have adventures with Na'toth - making telepathic Narns or she could join one of the teams making the new hyperspace routes.
 
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