Those '70s Shows

Upon announcement that Ice Cube will star in the title role in a movie remake of the 1970s TV show "Welcome Back, Kotter," or that the old nighttime soaper "Dallas" is going to become a feature film, you might think, "My god, haven't they run out of old TV series to make into lousy movies?"

The answer is — they're not even close! Believe it or not, there are still plenty of series left unplundered as studio executives hope that a familiar name (well, familiar to some people; how many teenagers have really heard of "Welcome Back, Kotter"?) brings box-office success. "Bewitched" be damned.

Bad scripts piled upon general indifference have created 10 Avengers for every Fugitive, but picking the right show to redo can go a long way toward artistic and financial success. And picking the wrong one can turn a rising executive into a commissary busboy in a heartbeat.

So here is a list of five movies could work and five movies that definitely won't. And like most movies, each remake has a place for Samuel L. Jackson, veteran '70s remake star and proven jack of one trade. Though, even Mr. Jackson couldn't save the movies on the bottom list.

Five That Could Work:

1. Sanford and Son. The show about a crotchety Watts junk dealer, as well as its funky, Quincy Jones-penned theme song, is iconic enough that even younger audiences won't be scratching their heads over what the heck a "Sanford and Son" is. And you would have actors plowing over each other to be cast in this. I'd go with Samuel L. Jackson as Fred, Chris Rock as Lamont ("Big Dummy"), Cedric the Entertainer as Fred's friend Bubba, Mos Def as Lamont's friend Rollo, and Tyler Perry as Aunt Esther. Whitman Mayo, found after an exhaustive hunt by Conan O'Brien, should still play Grady.

2. The White Shadow. As a TV show, the drama about a white former NBA player who coached basketball at a mostly black inner-city L.A. high school was the equivalent of a middling major-conference team — good, but never title-bound. It actually could get better on the big screen. If it keeps the show's mix of Serious Issues and humor, it could say more about race than Crash, dig more into the perils of young basketball stars than He Got Game, and do more to explode sports-movie cliches perpetuated by a million Glory Roads. It could be the next Hoosiers, mixing basketball, culture and pathos into a satisfyingly emotional brew that would make the White Shadow, if nothing else, the next great, moneymaking sports cult movie. And Vince Vaughn, all 6-foot-5 of him, could get an Oscar nomination for playing Coach Ken Reeves. Samuel L. Jackson would play the school prinicipal who hires his old friend Reeves.

3. Chico and the Man. The sitcom of an old, white Chicano-bashing garage owner in the East Los Angeles barrio and the young Mexican-Puerto Rican he unwittingly takes under his wing was a hit in the mid-1970s. And that was before America's rapidly growing Hispanic population, and the backlash that's come in forms such as border-guarding vigilantes calling themselves the Minutemen (and besmirching the name of an incredible early 1980s punk band in the process). A funny movie with something to say — a new Chico and the Man could be an enjoyable comedy, and a social landmark. Gene Hackman would be great as the garage owner. Perhaps a young, relatively unknown rising star — as Freddie Prinze was in the 1970s — could be Chico. (It should NOT be Freddie Prinze Jr.). Sameul L. Jackson would take Scatman Crothers' role as the Man's black buddy, Louie the garbageman.

4. The Prisoner. Given the cult status that still surrounds this short-lived, mind-bending British series of the 1960s, it's stunning no one has put out a remake yet. Or maybe someone can't get the script right. The original, which aired in the US and 60 other countries, and spawned novels, comic books and other detritus in an almost Star Trek-like cult fashion, featured Patrick McGoohan as a British secret agent sentenced, Kafka-style, to a mysterious island and called only "Number Six." And it only gets weirder from there. If a British production company wants to remake the show not as a series "with liberties," but as a faithful adaptation — which, really, hasn't been seen by a mass audience — it would be electrifying, particularly in today's age of terrorism-induced paranoia. Samuel L. Jackson could play one of the constant parade of "New Number 2s."

5. Square Pegs. If this early 1980s sitcom is known for anything, it's the following: launching the careers of Sarah Jessica Parker, Jami Gertz and Ricky Nelson's daughter Tracy; having Devo perform at a "New Wave Bat Mitzvah;" going laugh-track free; and being canceled after one year amidst rumors (encapsulated in a TV Guide cover story) of rampant, on-set drug use. The show itself was oddly funny but a bit of a mess at times. Still, the raw material is there for a funny, but not too painful to watch, meditation on the timeless story of teens on the outside trying to join the in crowd. If Napoleon Dynamite can be a hit, then so can Square Pegs. Samuel L. Jackson could either play the high school principal, or the one black character's father.

Five That Will Never Work, Even with Samuel L. Jackson:

1. Hill Street Blues. Great, groundbreaking series that humanized police officers, freeing them from their previous, Dragnet-like stoicism. The problem for a movie is, Hill Street Blues had something like 10,000 regular characters, which even Robert Altman at his Nashville peak would have trouble cramming into one movie. If anyone, even Samuel L. Jackson, tries to get this made, I have one word of advice: Let's be careful out there.

2. Three's Company. The concept behind this late '70s-early '80s hit is so dated, it would have a hard time translating to today's audience. It was a big deal then that, a) a man would share an apartment with two women, and b) that he would have to pretend to be gay to stop his landlord from tossing him out for sharing an apartment with two women. Now? Not so much. A remake would be just a story about a guy who lives with two women, neither of whom will sleep with him. Ho-hum, even if Samuel L. Jackson played a Mr. Furley-style landlord, complete with Don Knotts' terrible, swingin'-bachelor clothes.

3. Laverne & Shirley/Happy Days/anything Garry Marshall produced. Many of Marshall's sitcoms were feel-good antidotes to the turmoil and malaise that marked the 1970s. They were popular, they were often funny, but they don't exactly get the blood running today. Are teenagers really going to flock to movie set in the 1950s in which people talk lustily about necking? And if you update the movies, are they going to look anything unlike a million buddy movie scripts that don't require you to pay rights fees? And there is no way Samuel L. Jackson is going to play Arnold, the owner of the Happy Days gang's malt shop/hangout. Not unless Arnold also keeps a machine gun underneath the cash drawer.

4. Police Woman. Like Three's Company, the whole concept of the show is dated — chicks do police work! You're kidding! While it appears putting, say, Jessica Alba in some Angie Dickinson-style, going-undercover-as-a-hooker outfits might be an automatic draw for millions of teenage boys, it's likely a few hot screenshots will end up all over the Internet, and those boys will realize they don't have to pay $10 — or sit through Samuel L. Jackson as the police commissioner — to see them.

5. The Love Boat. This might have had a chance, but between the Minnesota Vikings' lake-cruise scandal and the recent spate of reports about quarantining scads of ill passengers on cruise ships, watching a romantic getaway on the Pacific Princess doesn't seem quite as appealing — even if Samuel L. Jackson were Captain Stubing.

Or perhaps I've poo-pooed these shows-to-movies too soon. Given all the excited Internet chatter about Jackson's upcoming action movie, "Snakes on a Plane" — It's snakes! On a motherfuckin' plane! — it appears the surefire way to pep up these otherwise unwatchable remakes is to combine them with not only Samuel L. Jackson, but also snakes.

So Hill Street Blues becomes "Snakes in a Police Depot." Three's Company is "Snakes in an Apartment Building." Laverne and Shirley is "Snakes in a Brewery." Police Woman is "Snakes in Her Pants."

And Love Boat is, naturally, "Snakes on a Boat." Motherfuckin' snakes. Where? On a motherfuckin' boat. And there ain't a got-damned thing you can do about it.

— Bob Cook (bobc@flakmag.com)

— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)