Remaking classic movies is often a pointless exercise (“The Women,” anyone?), but there’s nothing wrong with revisiting a kernel of inspiration buried in junk.
Hence Pop Machine offers up this movie for remake purposes: “Americathon.”
This was a consensus bad comedy from 1979. It takes place in the then-near future — 1998! — where the U.S. has run out of oil, people are living in gasless cars and the government is about to go bankrupt.
So the clueless president (John Ritter) hires a TV consultant (Peter Riegert) to mount a 30-day telethon to save the country. Harvey Korman plays the cross-dressing, drug-addled host. And Jay Leno may wish to forget playing a character named Poopy Butt who boxes his mom — and loses.
So scrap the original but keep the premise: People can’t afford houses or gas, the economy needs a giant bailout, the guy in the White House is getting desperate …
This could work as a comedy, no?
Or would it have to be a documentary?
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Read Pop Machine, Mark Caro’s blog about popular culture, at chicagotribune.com/popmachine.
