A Star Is Born—for the Fourth Time

The re-make is Hollywood's biggest cliché. Even moreso than sequels and happy endings. And streets wetted down for nighttime shots. Or the inevitable scantily-clad prostitute being paraded by whenever the script calls for a police station interior.

(And while I'm at it, anyone recall a neighborhood shot that didn't include a dog barking in the distance? Me neither.)

The re-make is Hollywood's equivalent of carry-on baggage fees; cash grabs with no reason for being other than to puff-up a coterie of wallets. While they occur with the numbing regularity of sunrise, re-makes rarely surpass the original.

There are, of course, exceptions. John Huston's debut—The Maltese Falcon—is one. Howard Hawks' brilliant take on The Front Page (His Girl Friday) is another. And Richard Lester's 1973 reboot of The Three Musketeers successfully injected humor into the classic.

In the twenty-first century, The Thomas Crown Affair and The Painted Veil proved re-makes don't have to be a thoughtless whoring-out of the creative process or the shameless exploitation of those who love movies.

But on the whole, re-makes are just tarted-up and louder versions of the original that leave one asking “Why?”

Which brings me to the latest take on A Star Is Born.

There are millions of millennials to whom this story will appear new. And the presence of Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper will have millions more swiping their credit cards and passing legal tender through box office windows.

As a marketing exercise, it is unassailable. But as a cinematic one? Not so much.

Beyond providing a nice payday for all involved, what's the point? It was told to perfection in 1954 and remains a classic.

But imagine the poor millennial who, forced to watch it, would remain unmoved simply because the characters don't carry i-Phones or use words like devastated. Bradley Cooper and company certainly have.

Half the fun I had pursuing my love of books and music and movies was getting outside of my comfort zone and delving into a time (or even a culture) well outside of my own. It gave my own life context and deepened my understanding on how we came to arrive at this point in the fashion that we did.

It taught me that we are more alike than different. Long story short, it stretched me.

Catering to short attention spans, presentism and a distaste for history sentences us to the kind of myopia that infests our political landscape, where our ignorance of anything that exists outside of our sphere of familiarity frequently curdles into suspicion and fear.

Even if it could benefit us. Even if we could learn from it.

In 1869, Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely. Broad, wholesome, charitable views can not be acquired by vegetating in one's little corner of Earth.”

Stream the classic 1954 version on Netflix. Check out the DVD from your local library. Please. Pretend life is a Nike commercial and just do it.

You won't even need a yoga mat.