By Daniel Mumby /
3. The Director Wouldn't Have Control
During the production of the Robocop remake, Fernando Meirelles (director of the brilliant City of God) received a number of distressed phone calls from its director, José Padilha. If Meirelles is to be believed, Padilha said he was having "the worst experience of his life", that "for every ten ideas I have, nine are cut", and that "I have never suffered so much and I don't want to do it again." Of course, fights between studios and directors are nothing new, with Robocop being long delayed when Darren Aronofsky quarreled with producers over his vision for the remake. But it does raise an important point about modern Hollywood, in which a director never really gets to have his or her way. No Hollywood studio would allow a director, new or experienced, to make a film with the same freedom that Hawks or De Palma enjoyed; Attanasio's script will be re-written by a committee, and there will be no final cut privilege. The remake will probably end up as a hollow studio project: tolerable if we're lucky, but most likely a complete mess.