Those wacky Dread Central dudes dropped us a line to let us know about a recent interview they had with Gary Sherman at the Fantasia Film Festival, concerning Sherman and the remake of his own film DEATHLINE (which is also known as RAW MEAT).
In the interview, Gary stated that after being approached by various studios about acquiring the rights to said remake, he and producer Alan Ladd Jr. decided to remake the film themselves (albeit with reservations). “The only person that’s ever remade their own film is Alfred Hitchcock (the film in question, for those who don’t know, is THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, which was originally made in 1932 and remade in 1956). I don’t know if I’d want to be egotistical enough to put myself in that company.” Even his friend and director, Guillermo del Toro (HELLBOY), told him “You can’t improve upon perfection. Don’t even think about it!”
On the process of rewriting a decades old film, Sherman says that he has started to do a rewrite of the original script, “..except [I’m] going to move it to America and make it American.”, since he decided to set it in Chicago because he loves shooting there. “[I] had to put myself in the space where I’ve just come up with the idea of survivors of a tunnel collapse from 100 years ago under Chicago. Historically it works better in Chicago [than] London because Chicago had a series of freight tunnels that were built illegally after the fire. The tunnels are still there under central Chicago. It’s really creepy.” As a further step to update the script, Sherman says that he thought about society today and what characters are today. “What happens down below is very much the same, but what prompts things above is different. There’s no Donald Pleasance because the cops don’t get involved in this one. They don’t give a sh*t.”
Wow, looks as though Sherman’s really thought this one through. I never saw the original film, but after hearing about this, it’d be worth the look! To read the entire article, which includes a bunch of potheads (?!), slam that cursor here.
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