Remake of Hitchcock's 'The Birds' Not Taking Flight

You don't need to stay around The Big Picture very long to figure out that I'm a major Hitchcock fan. Of his American films, I'd say I own all but about six, and this is a guy who put out nearly a movie a year for close to 30 years. One that I don't own is The Birds, which I've never really cared for. It's Hitchcock trying to remain Hitchcock in my mind, and it's the beginning of the end. So there's been talk about remaking The Birds for a few years, which is fine. It's not Psycho or Vertigo. And the guys at Platinum Dunes had apparently been lining up Naomi Watts to play the Tippi Hedren role and there were whispers that George Clooney would co-star. I believe the first part of that and not the second. But now it looks like The Birds might not happen, after all. CHUD talked to Brad Fuller and Andrew Form on the set of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and they're definitely having problems mounting the movie they want to make. "We keep trying, but I don't know," Fuller began. "That's so hard...to get the script right. We continue, and we struggle, and I just don't have a ton to say about it until we've got something good." Fuller admits that tackling Hitchcock has brought more scrutiny than he at first imagined (really? How is that surprising?) and he and Form joked a bit about how you make a pack of crazed birds interesting to a modern audience. "What do [the birds] do? They peck and poke," said Fuller. "(S)o there’s not a lot of variety as to what can happen." Hmm. OK. Fuller apparently doesn't realize that it's actually not a movie about birds but a movie about people being attacked by birds. You're not supposed to identify with the birds. The "not a lot of variety" argument doesn't wash for the guys remaking movies about faceless slashers like Leatherface and Jason. Give the actors something different to do, change the stakes, change the outcome for some of the characters. Hell, if you've got Naomi Watts, put her to work.Maybe that's why they're having a problem.

Comments

[Sensaes]

Perhaps they're just going about the project the wrong way? Instead of trying to remake someone else's film, why not go back to the source material, since Hitchcock completely screwed up Daphne de Maurier's original short story?

[Sensaes]

*Laughs.* Er, rather like I screwed up the spelling of her name, there. (Sorry, Daph.)

[quin browne]

interesting they can't find more to 'make'. the book, 'the birds' is far more terrifying than the film was, and the film made me doubt any flock of birds around as innocent.

as a side note--there was a barbie 'the birds' doll out at christmas last... she has two in her hair, they are flying around...and she still has that barbie smile. it was messed up.

[Sean]

Go Alfred Hitchcock, a genius, if they do anything they better get it right!