King Kong Re-Make: Been There, Done That

Pretty much everyone on the globe now knows that Peter Jackson's version of King Kong hits the theaters on December 13. We know that it is based on the 1933 King Kong, brought to the screen by Merian C. Cooper. We are awash in re-make hype but did you know that it's all happened before? It did, 29 years ago, back in 1976 with the hugely anticipated Dino de Laurentis version of King Kong. And here's the cover of Time to prove it.

Here Comes King Kong
Time, October 25, 1976

Just for the fun of it, let's play the numbers game. The 1933 version cost $670,000 and grossed $1.7 million and this was no small matter considering that FDR has just closed the banks that year. The 1976 version cost $24 million and grossed $132 million worldwide. This latest version is budged at $207 million and God-only-knows what it will eventually make.

Yet somehow it (the 1933 version) worked, back in the early days of talking pictures, and damned if it doesnot look like it is going to work again, in a supposedly more sophisticated age. The ultimate triumph of special effects over common sense? A weird sexual charge, heavy in portent, reassuringly innocent in presentation? A comic strip rendering of a myth dredged up out of the collective unconscious and splashed so boldly over the screen that the audience is awed into acceptance by it's sheer audacity? Or is it, finally, just an act of primal showmanship, a Barnum-like invitation to admit to ourselves that we are all members of the great fraternity of suckerhood and simply revel in the release of cultural inhibitions that admission sometimes encourage?

That's a heap of questions. By the time I get to the last one, I've forgotten what the first one was. In any case, Time noted that the screenings of the 1976 Kong had played "excellently" to the "carefully selected audiences."

It's become popular since 1976 to pooh-pooh that version which was Jessica Lange's introduction to film audiences. But Time certainly wasn't buying into that, calling screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s script "marvelously clever, yet touching." This was an interesting piece of praise considering that Semple Jr. was known, at the time, as the creator of TV's Batman series. More tidbits: Barbara Streisand almost signed on to play the Fay Wray role and they thought about Cher but she was pregnant when production started. So they went with an unknown.

Time concluded their article with this quote from mega-producer de Laurentis:

"No one cry when Jaws die," Dino says, his voice rising in passion as he develops his theme. "But when the monkey die, people gonna cry. Intellectuals gonna love Kong; even film buffs who love the first Kong gonna love ours. Why? Because I no give them crap. I no spend two, three million to do quick business. I spend 24 million on my Kong. I give them quality. I got here a great love story, a great adventure. And she rated P.G. For everybody."

I'm imagining Peter Jackson has his own New Zealand way to express his passion, but he probably feels much the same. He might also add, hopefully, that the third time's the charm!

Comments

[J. Ott]

I've just seen it, and it the third time *is* a charm:

http://www.makingthemovie.info/2005/12/early-review-king-kong-2005.html