Modern Makeovers

It's time for another update to the Un-Zone, a site dedicated to the random thoughts that live inside the mind of a law school student at the University of Kansas. Uh oh...I just mentioned the three deadliest words in the English language..."law school student." These three words do not bode very well as there are some people out there who consider law school students to be stuck-up and pretentious people who consider everything they say to be the word of God. Like everyone else in this world, some law school students are like this, and some just aren't. I know quite a few good ones. Anyways...

Today's topic is about remakes. Many people have complained about the lack of "good" movies this summer. They're unoriginal. If you think about it, every movie can be broken down into several basic plots. It's just the little details that make everything look different. Well, it is true that a lot of the movies this summer are remakes. The never ending Batman series, the Herbie the Lovebug series, Bad News Bears, The Longest Yard...yup. Hollywood has run out of new ideas, as if they ever had any.
OK...what about music? Now music...unoriginality is originality. All you do is take a song, change the words and modify the beat, and you got a brand new song. Then you sell it to a gullible public who will buy it and make you millions. Hillary Duff did a remake of "My Generation" but modified the verses. Instead of "Hope I die before I get old..." she does "Hope I don't die before I get old." This changes the entire meaning of the song. What about Gwen Stefani's "If I Were a Rich Girl"? Sounds familiar? It should if you listen to musicals. Where have you heard it before? How about Fiddler on the Roof, the musical about Russian Jews during the Czarist era? What? Yes.
I don't blame them. They gotta sell CDs and make a profit. I make song parodies. I'll be really helpful. So what if you took some "old" songs and gave them a modern twist? Like Eminem doing a Broadway musical like The Producers and the song "I Wanna Be a Producer." It wouldn't be all too bad. Come on. Mel Brooks made fun of Broadway, Hitler, and God knows what else in his movies. So Eminem in a musical would be nothing:

I want to be a white rapper…no Vanilla Ice wannabe.
I want to be a white rapper…one with street credibility.
I want to be a white rapper…make my million bucks today!
I want to be a white rapper—gotta team up with Dr. Dre!

Or maybe a real classic Rogers and Hammerstein musical like Oklahoma. Yes, that venerable musical about the Midwest. All those cornfields, square-dancing, clean living. Nothing even remotely related to Eminem and his image. Remember "Oh What a Beautiful Morning?" A new version of it:

The critics do not like my lyrics…
I bash on women and gays.
I’ve been called crude, rude, and obscene…
But I don’t give a @$%& any ways!

Could you picture a musical like The Sound of Music if Alyssa Milano played Liesel? I can see the changes that they would make. For those who can, do you remember the scene underneath the gazebo when it rains? The one where Liesel and Rolf sing “I am Sixteen” and in the end, Liesel gets her first kiss. Ah, nothing like seeing a girl get her first kiss…budding romance. In the new version however, you can kiss that scene goodbye. Instead, Liesel would sing about her former “Who’s the Boss” costar being homosexual. One must wonder how any guy would become gay after being around her...

I am sexy, totally sexy—Danny Pintaro’s gay!
How can he go queer…when this is all here
Right by him every day?
It is crazy, totally crazy—this is some quirk of fate!
There are many…very sad girls…
That wish that—he would turn out—to be STRAIGHT!

No little “What If” on celebrities would be complete without the master of doing remakes on old songs…Puff Daddy, AKA Sean Jean Combs, Puffy, P. Diddy, etc. Who can resist crying when they hear “I’ll Be Missing You,” especially if you were an 80’s child? It is a remake of a Police song called “I’ll Be Watching You”? I couldn’t help doing air guitar to “Come With Me.” Maybe it was the awesome guitar solo from Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” and the solo was done by Jimmy Page.
Puffy helped another rapper, Mace, with his showy music video, “Bad, Bad Boys.” Mace couldn’t resist himself from copying off of Puff Daddy. I’m not talking about the sexy girls, the hip clothes, or the conspicuous flashing of money and wealth. Mace sampled just like Puffy. The song that he “used”, interestingly enough, was also called “Bad, Bad Boys” and it was sung by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. Need I say more? As one of his songs go: “He takes hits from the eighties/And make them sound so crazy”.
Now, as the king of remakes, what better musical to do than The Sound of Music? An apt title for this rapper/clothes designer/producer who changes his women, persona, and his artist name as well and as often as he remakes songs. What better song from this musical than “The Hills are Alive?” With a little lyric re-engineering and some quick modifications to the beat, this melody can sound fresh. Imagine as we do a panoramic sweep of the Vegas Strip, the neon aglow and shiny convertibles drive by. We zoom onto the roof of the MGM Grand and we see Puff Daddy standing, arms stretched, dressed in flashy clothing and the requisite amount of diamonds and gold and platinum. The camera focuses on him, the music building to a crescendo. Then we hear the lyrics:

My CDs are filled—with sampled music.
I know you have heard…this song before!
My wallet is blessed…I use sampled music.
I’ll reuse…once more.

There aren't that many original ideas out there, at least when it comes to entertainment. Even this is probably an imitation of something. That's all for now.