You don't leave the film alone. You have a new audience, and you have a new medium. Why would you leave it alone? Film is not an antique. It's not a relic. It's not a Leonardo da Vinci. I don't want someone painting over a da Vinci or Rembrandt. But these movies aren't that.
I wouldn't want to cover a Hank Williams song in a country-western way. It doesn't occur to me instinctually to re-create productions. I'm interested in re-creating songs. Putting different clothes on them.
In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.
The so-called "remake" is simply a commercial formulation of a much deeper exchange which accounts for the way cinema is what it is.
I'm interested in adapting books and all sorts of things.
The story and the poem are obviously changed by being placed in the novel, so in a sense they're no longer the works that preceded the novel.
Some of the storytelling we did in 'Battlestar Galactica,' to graft that onto 'Star Trek,' it would have required changing the entire format of the show and, really, a different taste of the show.
I don't think remakes should be looked down upon.
