1,160 words
One of the pleasures of live theater and opera is that you come to a deeper appreciation of an artwork by seeing it performed and produced in different ways by different people. The work’s identity shines out more clearly through all the changes.
This pleasure is usually denied to moviegoers. Reboots and ripoffs are increasingly common these days, because the entertainment industry seems committed to cranking out products without nurturing talent and creativity. But genuine remakes are rare. And it is rarer still for a director to remake one of his own films. The most significant examples are Alfred Hitchcock, who remade 1934’s The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956, and Michael Mann, whose 1995 masterpiece Heat is a remake of L.A. Takedown, his 1989 pilot for a TV series. When NBC declined the series, he reworked it as a stand-alone TV movie.
