Speaker 1: This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast
Speaker 1: More what You Hear weekday Afternoons on the Drive.
Speaker 2: Ed Laser is a six time Telly Award winning filmmaker
Speaker 2: and film historian based out of Champagne, Illinois. In addition
Speaker 2: to writing about international remakes, he's restored and remastered Turkish
Speaker 2: adaptations of Rambo and Star Wars, as well as published
Speaker 2: the first English translation of Dracula in Istanbul. His new
Speaker 2: book out is an interesting read. It's called How the
Speaker 2: World Remade Hollywood at Glazier. Let's start with what brought
Speaker 2: you to this topic?
Speaker 3: Sure, well, I was in college and I was, for
Speaker 3: whatever reason, watching all of the Hannibal movies. I think
Speaker 3: I'd just read the books, and Red Dragon had been
Speaker 3: made a couple of times as Manhunter in the eighties
Speaker 3: and then again in the two thousands, and I was
Speaker 3: wondering if there were any other versions that I was
Speaker 3: just unaware of. And so I was kind of surfing
Speaker 3: IMDb and all of the connections pages and discovered a
Speaker 3: Bollywood film called Song Harsh, a remake of Silence of
Speaker 3: the Lambs. And let me tell you, you have not
Speaker 3: lived until you've seen Hannibal Lecter sing and dance in
Speaker 3: a Zoro costume. And from there I had to find
Speaker 3: out what else existed in this world of remakes, authorized
Speaker 3: and unauthorized, and came across the Star Wars and it
Speaker 3: started snowballing from there.
Speaker 2: How the world remade Hollywood Global interpretations of sixty five
Speaker 2: iconic films. It's ed Glazer? Who's a Glazer? Who's joining us? Now?
Speaker 2: So were these films? You said some of them were authorized,
Speaker 2: some of them were not. So many of them did
Speaker 2: have the permission to be remade by the creators of
Speaker 2: the original film.
Speaker 3: I would say far fewer of them than you would expect.
Speaker 2: I thought so too, because they didn't have the budgets either,
Speaker 2: did they.
Speaker 3: No? No, I mean you're talking about countries like Turkey
Speaker 3: or Nigeria, and you know they were. I mean, Turkey
Speaker 3: was at the time in the in the seventies, like
Speaker 3: the third most production productive film industry in the world,
Speaker 3: but it was really fly by the seat of your pants,
Speaker 3: and they didn't have the ability to spend money internationally.
Speaker 3: They couldn't import stuff, so their budgets were super low
Speaker 3: and film was really hard to get hold of, so
Speaker 3: they really were kind of dealing with insurmountable odds to
Speaker 3: make some of these films.
Speaker 2: That was my next question as to, Okay, why why
Speaker 2: didn't they just import the film and dub it into
Speaker 2: their language and off you go.
Speaker 3: Well, in some cases, when I say film was hard
Speaker 3: to get, I really mean the film stock. But yes,
Speaker 3: in some cases some of these films weren't released domestically
Speaker 3: or in some cases, the thing about Hollywood films is
Speaker 3: that they would offer these films for international release, but
Speaker 3: they would be more expensive than their older films, and
Speaker 3: so in countries like Turkey, they'd say, well, we're going
Speaker 3: to wait a little bit to bring this one in
Speaker 3: because we want to wait for the price to go down.
Speaker 3: But hey, we've heard that The Exorcist is really super
Speaker 3: popular all over the world. So since we don't have
Speaker 3: it here yet, I'm going to go off and do
Speaker 3: my own version and see if I can kind of
Speaker 3: make some money based on the hype before the original
Speaker 3: comes here.
Speaker 2: Ed Glazer with us how the world remade Hollywood global
Speaker 2: interpretations of sixty five iconic films. You've already mentioned Annibal Lecter.
Speaker 2: What are some of the other hilarious remakes that remade Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, you've got Japanese Spider Man. You've got Turkish Batman,
Speaker 3: also Turkish Superman. You've got an Indian version of The
Speaker 3: Fast and the Furious, a Russian version of Commando, the
Speaker 3: Arnold Schwarzenegger film. You've got Turkish James Bond. You've got
Speaker 3: a Chinese high school musical. You've got Italian Jaws, Italian
Speaker 3: The Warriors, a Japanese paranormal activity. There's just there's so
Speaker 3: many of them, and they're all so fascinating.
Speaker 2: And some of them I'm wondering how legal they were
Speaker 2: in the countries where they were produced. I mean, we're
Speaker 2: talking about some Muslim countries which don't allow a certain
Speaker 2: amount of skin to be shown, or women's faces, or
Speaker 2: certain stretches of sexuality.
Speaker 3: You know that's really true. There is actually an Egyptian
Speaker 3: remake of the Rocky Horror Picture Shows that I talk
Speaker 3: about in the book. And the thing about the Rocky
Speaker 3: Horror Picture Show is that you really can't get away
Speaker 3: with showing that in Egypt, or at least you couldn't
Speaker 3: at the time that this was me and so the
Speaker 3: director of the Egyptian version, who was a big fan
Speaker 3: of the original had to change a ton of stuff,
Speaker 3: like the entire second and third act basically needed a
Speaker 3: complete rewrite, and so they kind of reworked it into
Speaker 3: a story about Dracula, but there's so much of the
Speaker 3: original that's still there, as well as kind of an
Speaker 3: interesting sort of sociohistorical slant that has a lot more
Speaker 3: to do with Egypt at the time than the original
Speaker 3: had to do with American culture. Or you get say
Speaker 3: Indian versions of horror films where the originals are gory
Speaker 3: or there is a lot of skin shown, and it's
Speaker 3: probably not it wouldn't normally be the best option for
Speaker 3: a wide release in India because you get censorship problems.
Speaker 3: But they are releasing these films to the sort of
Speaker 3: lower budget uh you know, the the rural theaters and
Speaker 3: things like that, where you're not getting the sort of
Speaker 3: big budget stuff where you can kind of get away
Speaker 3: with some of that.
Speaker 2: How the World Remade, How the World Remade? Hollywood Global
Speaker 2: Interpretations of sixty five iconic films and Glazier is with us.
Speaker 2: And did any of these filmmakers get rich?
Speaker 3: Yes, maybe not rich, but you know, there's the one
Speaker 3: of the most famous ones is the Turkish Star Wars,
Speaker 3: which steals footage from Star Wars and also music from
Speaker 3: Indiana Jones and a bunch of other films. The whole
Speaker 3: story is kind of a Flash Gordon sort of thing,
Speaker 3: so it's really kind of a hodgepodge. But it's become
Speaker 3: kind of infamous as one of the worst movies ever made,
Speaker 3: which I think is not fair because I think it's
Speaker 3: it's wild and wonderful and relentlessly entertaining.
Speaker 2: So you watched you watched most of these?
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh yeah, I watched. I watched so many of them.
Speaker 3: And uh, you know that film came out and and
Speaker 3: you know, it bought the director a new car, It
Speaker 3: paid off the offices of the film company. So yeah,
Speaker 3: these movies made money. I mean not all of them.
Speaker 3: Some of them tanked. There's an Indian Harry Potter movie
Speaker 3: that just made back twenty percent of its budget or something.
Speaker 2: And that was my next question. We're not talking just
Speaker 2: old films like Batman and Superman. I mean, are they
Speaker 2: still doing this?
Speaker 3: They are, but we're now in an era where they
Speaker 3: kind of can't get away with doing it on the
Speaker 3: qt They kind of have to really pay for the rights.
Speaker 3: They may still remake it in a different way, but
Speaker 3: there's more scrutiny.
Speaker 2: And I would think there are more larger Hollywood studios
Speaker 2: that are willing to produce those versions for the different
Speaker 2: languages and the different cultures because they ultimately get the
Speaker 2: money out of that.
Speaker 3: That is exactly right. And Disney's in China right now
Speaker 3: doing co productions, and they did the High School Musical China.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of companies that are working with Indian
Speaker 3: companies to do remakes. There was an Indian remake of
Speaker 3: that Tom Cruise Cameron Diaz movie Night and Day that
Speaker 3: came out not too long ago.
Speaker 2: And we're seeing it in television too. I mean, how
Speaker 2: many of our current television shows are inspired by a
Speaker 2: British original?
Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely, so many.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is a lot easier understandable than.
Speaker 3: Yes. And well, and you know, a lot of us
Speaker 3: are kind of aware of all of the ways in
Speaker 3: which Hollywood remakes international films, a lot of the Japanese
Speaker 3: war films and so forth, and I kind of wanted
Speaker 3: to turn the mirror around and see how our culture
Speaker 3: was reinterpreted.
Speaker 2: And he goes backwards and does just that, how the
Speaker 2: world remade Hollywood Global Interpretations of sixty five iconic films
Speaker 2: and interesting and amusing read from Ed Glazier. And if
Speaker 2: you're a film, if you're a fan of cinema, you
Speaker 2: will be a fan of this book. And I thank
Speaker 2: you for joining.
Speaker 3: Us, sir, absolutely, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Speaker 1: Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
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