Tofu At The Box Office

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Doug Gambel.

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Interviewed recently by the Deseret News, actor-director Robert Redford was asked about rumors that there might be a remake of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" to star Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Redford said he found it "depressing."

It's not the word I would have chosen. "Sickening" is more like it, just like most of what passes for entertainment coming out of Hollywood these days. "Why do they have to mess with things that were perfect the first time around?" Redford added.

Why? Because a dearth of creativity, originality, and risk-taking makes it easier to rework a previous success than to try producing a new one, which is why we can't rule out something like a remake of "Casablanca" starring Ethan Hawke and Paris Hilton. But the possibility of Damon and Affleck in the roles made famous by Redford and Paul Newman opens up a whole topic that Redford did not address.

Most of Hollywood's former leading men have been replaced by boys. Starring roles that used to feature guy's guys now go to punks. Damon and Affleck are not worthy to wipe the dust from Butch Cassidy's bicycle.

As someone who became a teenager in the late 1950s, my movie heroes were larger-than-life figures like John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Robert Mitchum, Jimmy Stewart, Marlon Brando, Clark Gable, William Holden, Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, and others of that mold.

Compare that lineup to the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Cruise, Heath Ledger, Justin Timberlake, and the aforementioned Damon and Affleck. It's like sizing up a good steak next to a plate of tofu. And while Tom Hanks has been compared to Jimmy Stewart, as versatile and easy to take as Hanks is, he's no Stewart.

The old Hollywood stars, above all, were adults. They had a steely maturity and craggy features that made them look like they had lived a life that delivered a few hard blows along the way, just like our dads. Many had served in WWII. And they all looked different from one another.

Today's breed is made up of kids playing adults. Their faces bear none of that character inflicted by struggle and they appear as though they all emerged from the same muffin tin.

And then there are the voices. The voices of old Hollywood were distinctive, while today's are entirely forgettable. It's one of the reasons that impersonators such as Rich Little are virtually never seen on national TV any more. His impressions of the old-timers are considered passé, and how do you imitate the nondescript voices of Kutcher or Pitt, et al? Most of the great Hollywood voices are gone forever. The new ones are as ethereal as a fairy.

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