The Remakes, Reboots, Ripoffs, and Re-imaginings of Politics
by Leigh ScottActor and comedian Sammy Petrillo passed away over the weekend. Who is Sammy Petrillo? Good question. I wasn’t familiar with him either when I heard the news, but after a few minutes on Al Gore’s Internet I found out a lot.
Sammy was a Bronx born actor and comedian who had some minor success in the 1950s. He took his physical similarity to Jerry Lewis and ran with it. He became known as the “fake Jerry Lewis” after creating an onstage and onscreen persona that mimicked Lewis’ shtick. He even went as far as to hook up with a Dean Martinesque straight man named Duke Mitchell. The real Jerry Lewis wasn’t amused and even went so far as to intimidate others in Hollywood not to feature Petrillo on their shows and bullied Vegas venues into blackballing his act.
Most reboots are epic fails.
The point of bringing up Petrillo (besides encouraging you to watch his funny performance in “Bela Lugosi meets the Brooklyn Gorilla” on YouTube) is to illustrate that the “trend” of ripoffs, remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings is nothing new. Take it from me, the guy who shamelessly made “Transmorphers,” remakes and ripoffs are part of Hollywood history. What is more depressing is the fact that re-imagining and remakes are also part of the political culture.
Our society has a sort of “political amnesia”; forcing us to repeat the same economic and policy mistakes every thirty years or so. What else is the Obama administration but a “remake” of the Clinton administration (with almost half the original cast!)? You can almost hear the pitch meeting. “It’s FDR meets Clinton! We reboot the franchise. We forget about the Carter episode just like we pretended that Superman III and IV never happened.” (more…)
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