Via GroovyVic comes the horrifying word that the Coen brothers are remaking True Grit, with Jeff Bridges in the role of Rooster Cogburn.
Oh, sure. Why not? I mean, what does anything matter anymore?
- – Sound of flask cap being hastily unscrewed – -
But how is it even possible to make such a film these days? What made Rooster Cogburn (and so many other Wayne characters) so good was that under the boozy, eccentric, cantankerous exterior the audience knew that there was a man of honor, integrity and morality, a -dare I say it? – hero.
But we live in a post-modern age, in which all those old-fashioned notions have been largely jettisoned. Under the boozy, eccentric exterior of characters like the Dude (and other Coen brother creations) lies….what? Ambivalence? Relativism? Nihilism? There’s really no distinction.
So I really don’t see how this works.
Plus, you don’t mess with a classic. Just ask Tom Hanks, who is still pulling out splinters of shrapnel from his bombed attempt to “update” The Ladykillers.
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November 8, 2009 at 3:30 am
Boy Named Sous
Jeff Bridges couldn’t lift The Duke’s empty jockstrap if he had a fulcrum and a lever the length of John Wayne’s… “Rooster” Cogburn.
November 8, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Robbo
ROTFLMAO!!, as the kids say, or at least used to.
November 9, 2009 at 10:41 am
GroovyVic
“Fill your hands you sonofabitch!”
Really, do you think Bridges could believably deliver a line like that? I think not.
November 9, 2009 at 12:09 pm
The Abbott
“These men are nihilists, Donny. They’re cowards.”
I think maybe John Goodman could play a Duke role. Jeff Bridges, not so much.
November 9, 2009 at 5:46 pm
mothe
Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn? Awwwah Jeez, ala Tappit Brothers. Yet another example of the intellectual and creative poverty of the age–remaking what doesn’t need to be remade rather than coming up with something genuinely fresh. Of the same ilk as the latest remakes of, say, the novels of Jane Austen, doing them the way poor Jane would have if she had only been able. Or the even more detestable and pitiful sequels and prequels of Austen and Bronte novels.
Everything these days is pitched at a ten-year-old intelligence and emotional maturity, an especially dirty-minded ten year old, not hard to find today, and well supplied with the readies.
Bah.
P. S. Tom Hanks as Alec Guinness???? Not bloody likely, mate.
November 10, 2009 at 1:40 am
The Bovina Bloviator
I hope you won’t hold it against too much Robbo when I confess to you I loved “The Big Lebowsky.” Perhaps you’ll judge me less harshly knowing I saw “True Grit” when it was released and love it too.