Swarms and swarms of such happy moviegoers left the Beekman Theater one afternoon in 1981, a golden New York weekday that made you look around and think, “Does anyone in this city have a job?”
Then again, the title character of the movie was a pathologically work-averse New Yorker named Arthur and the one negative comment at the exits was a killer Upper East Side nitpick: “They blew it. The Rolls Royce at the end had a Z license plate, so you know it was a rental. Otherwise, it was a perfect movie.”
Yes, perfect. A perfect New York movie. Thirty years later, our best memories are hard targets: Hollywood is doing a remake of "Arthur." Really, you would think the Landmarks Preservation Commission can expand its purview and do something about this. It saves the Brill and Spring Mills Buildings from desecration, why not its movies?
And let’s not kid ourselves. The "Arthur" remake will be a desecration; the movie equivalent of Lazlo Toth taking a hammer to the Pieta. (Imagine the studio job offers that must have landed him.)
Speaking of Michelangelo, the film business likes referring to itself as an “art form.” The one nice thing about Wall Street is that bankers, in trying to make money, admit they’re in it for the money. Those behind the new "Arthur" won’t/can’t be so blunt. Meetings and meetings and meetings will explore the best immaculate-hearted rationale for the project.
“We loved 'Arthur' and you must destroy the things you love.”
What? No, no. That’s no good.
“Woody wouldn’t let us re-make 'Manhattan.'”
No! That makes us sound like we’re not discerning in our unoriginality.
“(Writer/director) Steve Gordon passed away, as did the stars Dudley Moore and Sir John Gielgud, may they rest in peace. We’re remaking the film because (a) we wanted to honor them and (b) Who’s going to stop us?”
Well, that’s closer but, let’s talk about this some more.
The one motivation behind the project you can quickly dismiss is art. For a New York audience in particular, "Arthur" cannot be renovated, redecorated, punched up, updated or CGI-ed. In a word, it cannot be improved upon. Steve Gordon’s script was not only perfect in tone and wit, it served the city a buffet of illumination, comfort, wisdom and romance.
"Arthur" melded New York’s opposites, unveiling the prim, mysterious world of Upper East Side Von Bulow wealth with the plastic-napkin-holder-spouse-on-spouse screamers of Queens. The invisible rich and forgotten middle-class were interchangeably miserable and hopeful, loathsome and lovable. By the closing credits, the melting pot had melted into the most romantic city on Earth. Neat trick.
But "Arthur's" greatest gift was a boatload of brilliant one-line zingers. “One must usually go to a bowling alley to meet someone of your stature.” In a city where you would be happy to die after hitting a stranger with such a great put-down that he or she would have no choice but to kill you, "Arthur" was a gold mine of smart-bomb wit.
