Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast
More what You Hear weekday Afternoons on the Drive.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Ed Laser is a six time Telly Award winning filmmaker
and film historian based out of Champagne, Illinois. In addition
to writing about international remakes, he's restored and remastered Turkish
adaptations of Rambo and Star Wars, as well as published
the first English translation of Dracula in Istanbul. His new
book out is an interesting read. It's called How the
(00:35):
World Remade Hollywood at Glazier. Let's start with what brought
you to this topic?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Sure, well, I was in college and I was, for
whatever reason, watching all of the Hannibal movies. I think
I'd just read the books, and Red Dragon had been
made a couple of times as Manhunter in the eighties
and then again in the two thousands, and I was
wondering if there were any other versions that I was
just unaware of. And so I was kind of surfing
(01:02):
IMDb and all of the connections pages and discovered a
Bollywood film called Song Harsh, a remake of Silence of
the Lambs. And let me tell you, you have not
lived until you've seen Hannibal Lecter sing and dance in
a Zoro costume. And from there I had to find
out what else existed in this world of remakes, authorized
(01:26):
and unauthorized, and came across the Star Wars and it
started snowballing from there.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
How the world remade Hollywood Global interpretations of sixty five
iconic films. It's ed Glazer? Who's a Glazer? Who's joining us? Now?
So were these films? You said some of them were authorized,
some of them were not. So many of them did
have the permission to be remade by the creators of
(01:56):
the original film.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I would say far fewer of them than you would expect.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I thought so too, because they didn't have the budgets either,
did they.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
No? No, I mean you're talking about countries like Turkey
or Nigeria, and you know they were. I mean, Turkey
was at the time in the in the seventies, like
the third most production productive film industry in the world,
but it was really fly by the seat of your pants,
and they didn't have the ability to spend money internationally.
(02:30):
They couldn't import stuff, so their budgets were super low
and film was really hard to get hold of, so
they really were kind of dealing with insurmountable odds to
make some of these films.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
That was my next question as to, Okay, why why
didn't they just import the film and dub it into
their language and off you go.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Well, in some cases, when I say film was hard
to get, I really mean the film stock. But yes,
in some cases some of these films weren't released domestically
or in some cases, the thing about Hollywood films is
that they would offer these films for international release, but
they would be more expensive than their older films, and
(03:10):
so in countries like Turkey, they'd say, well, we're going
to wait a little bit to bring this one in
because we want to wait for the price to go down.
But hey, we've heard that The Exorcist is really super
popular all over the world. So since we don't have
it here yet, I'm going to go off and do
my own version and see if I can kind of
(03:33):
make some money based on the hype before the original
comes here.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Ed Glazer with us how the world remade Hollywood global
interpretations of sixty five iconic films. You've already mentioned Annibal Lecter.
What are some of the other hilarious remakes that remade Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Sure, well, you've got Japanese Spider Man. You've got Turkish Batman,
also Turkish Superman. You've got an Indian version of The
Fast and the Furious, a Russian version of Commando, the
Arnold Schwarzenegger film. You've got Turkish James Bond. You've got
a Chinese high school musical. You've got Italian Jaws, Italian
(04:17):
The Warriors, a Japanese paranormal activity. There's just there's so
many of them, and they're all so fascinating.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And some of them I'm wondering how legal they were
in the countries where they were produced. I mean, we're
talking about some Muslim countries which don't allow a certain
amount of skin to be shown, or women's faces, or
certain stretches of sexuality.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
You know that's really true. There is actually an Egyptian
remake of the Rocky Horror Picture Shows that I talk
about in the book. And the thing about the Rocky
Horror Picture Show is that you really can't get away
with showing that in Egypt, or at least you couldn't
at the time that this was me and so the
director of the Egyptian version, who was a big fan
(05:03):
of the original had to change a ton of stuff,
like the entire second and third act basically needed a
complete rewrite, and so they kind of reworked it into
a story about Dracula, but there's so much of the
original that's still there, as well as kind of an
interesting sort of sociohistorical slant that has a lot more
(05:24):
to do with Egypt at the time than the original
had to do with American culture. Or you get say
Indian versions of horror films where the originals are gory
or there is a lot of skin shown, and it's
probably not it wouldn't normally be the best option for
(05:47):
a wide release in India because you get censorship problems.
But they are releasing these films to the sort of
lower budget uh you know, the the rural theaters and
things like that, where you're not getting the sort of
big budget stuff where you can kind of get away
with some of that.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
How the World Remade, How the World Remade? Hollywood Global
Interpretations of sixty five iconic films and Glazier is with us.
And did any of these filmmakers get rich?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yes, maybe not rich, but you know, there's the one
of the most famous ones is the Turkish Star Wars,
which steals footage from Star Wars and also music from
Indiana Jones and a bunch of other films. The whole
story is kind of a Flash Gordon sort of thing,
so it's really kind of a hodgepodge. But it's become
kind of infamous as one of the worst movies ever made,
(06:44):
which I think is not fair because I think it's
it's wild and wonderful and relentlessly entertaining.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
So you watched you watched most of these?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Yes, Oh yeah, I watched. I watched so many of them.
And uh, you know that film came out and and
you know, it bought the director a new car, It
paid off the offices of the film company. So yeah,
these movies made money. I mean not all of them.
Some of them tanked. There's an Indian Harry Potter movie
that just made back twenty percent of its budget or something.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And that was my next question. We're not talking just
old films like Batman and Superman. I mean, are they
still doing this?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
They are, but we're now in an era where they
kind of can't get away with doing it on the
qt They kind of have to really pay for the rights.
They may still remake it in a different way, but
there's more scrutiny.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And I would think there are more larger Hollywood studios
that are willing to produce those versions for the different
languages and the different cultures because they ultimately get the
money out of that.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
That is exactly right. And Disney's in China right now
doing co productions, and they did the High School Musical China.
There's a lot of companies that are working with Indian
companies to do remakes. There was an Indian remake of
that Tom Cruise Cameron Diaz movie Night and Day that
came out not too long ago.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
And we're seeing it in television too. I mean, how
many of our current television shows are inspired by a
British original?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Oh? Absolutely, so many.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, which is a lot easier understandable than.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yes. And well, and you know, a lot of us
are kind of aware of all of the ways in
which Hollywood remakes international films, a lot of the Japanese
war films and so forth, and I kind of wanted
to turn the mirror around and see how our culture
was reinterpreted.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And he goes backwards and does just that, how the
world remade Hollywood Global Interpretations of sixty five iconic films
and interesting and amusing read from Ed Glazier. And if
you're a film, if you're a fan of cinema, you
will be a fan of this book. And I thank
you for joining.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Us, sir, absolutely, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation
This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast
More what You Hear weekday Afternoons on the Drive.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Ed Laser is a six time Telly Award winning filmmaker
and film historian based out of Champagne, Illinois. In addition
to writing about international remakes, he's restored and remastered Turkish
adaptations of Rambo and Star Wars, as well as published
the first English translation of Dracula in Istanbul. His new
book out is an interesting read. It's called How the
(00:35):
World Remade Hollywood at Glazier. Let's start with what brought
you to this topic?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Sure, well, I was in college and I was, for
whatever reason, watching all of the Hannibal movies. I think
I'd just read the books, and Red Dragon had been
made a couple of times as Manhunter in the eighties
and then again in the two thousands, and I was
wondering if there were any other versions that I was
just unaware of. And so I was kind of surfing
(01:02):
IMDb and all of the connections pages and discovered a
Bollywood film called Song Harsh, a remake of Silence of
the Lambs. And let me tell you, you have not
lived until you've seen Hannibal Lecter sing and dance in
a Zoro costume. And from there I had to find
out what else existed in this world of remakes, authorized
(01:26):
and unauthorized, and came across the Star Wars and it
started snowballing from there.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
How the world remade Hollywood Global interpretations of sixty five
iconic films. It's ed Glazer? Who's a Glazer? Who's joining us? Now?
So were these films? You said some of them were authorized,
some of them were not. So many of them did
have the permission to be remade by the creators of
(01:56):
the original film.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I would say far fewer of them than you would expect.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I thought so too, because they didn't have the budgets either,
did they.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
No? No, I mean you're talking about countries like Turkey
or Nigeria, and you know they were. I mean, Turkey
was at the time in the in the seventies, like
the third most production productive film industry in the world,
but it was really fly by the seat of your pants,
and they didn't have the ability to spend money internationally.
(02:30):
They couldn't import stuff, so their budgets were super low
and film was really hard to get hold of, so
they really were kind of dealing with insurmountable odds to
make some of these films.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
That was my next question as to, Okay, why why
didn't they just import the film and dub it into
their language and off you go.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Well, in some cases, when I say film was hard
to get, I really mean the film stock. But yes,
in some cases some of these films weren't released domestically
or in some cases, the thing about Hollywood films is
that they would offer these films for international release, but
they would be more expensive than their older films, and
(03:10):
so in countries like Turkey, they'd say, well, we're going
to wait a little bit to bring this one in
because we want to wait for the price to go down.
But hey, we've heard that The Exorcist is really super
popular all over the world. So since we don't have
it here yet, I'm going to go off and do
my own version and see if I can kind of
(03:33):
make some money based on the hype before the original
comes here.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Ed Glazer with us how the world remade Hollywood global
interpretations of sixty five iconic films. You've already mentioned Annibal Lecter.
What are some of the other hilarious remakes that remade Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Sure, well, you've got Japanese Spider Man. You've got Turkish Batman,
also Turkish Superman. You've got an Indian version of The
Fast and the Furious, a Russian version of Commando, the
Arnold Schwarzenegger film. You've got Turkish James Bond. You've got
a Chinese high school musical. You've got Italian Jaws, Italian
(04:17):
The Warriors, a Japanese paranormal activity. There's just there's so
many of them, and they're all so fascinating.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And some of them I'm wondering how legal they were
in the countries where they were produced. I mean, we're
talking about some Muslim countries which don't allow a certain
amount of skin to be shown, or women's faces, or
certain stretches of sexuality.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
You know that's really true. There is actually an Egyptian
remake of the Rocky Horror Picture Shows that I talk
about in the book. And the thing about the Rocky
Horror Picture Show is that you really can't get away
with showing that in Egypt, or at least you couldn't
at the time that this was me and so the
director of the Egyptian version, who was a big fan
(05:03):
of the original had to change a ton of stuff,
like the entire second and third act basically needed a
complete rewrite, and so they kind of reworked it into
a story about Dracula, but there's so much of the
original that's still there, as well as kind of an
interesting sort of sociohistorical slant that has a lot more
(05:24):
to do with Egypt at the time than the original
had to do with American culture. Or you get say
Indian versions of horror films where the originals are gory
or there is a lot of skin shown, and it's
probably not it wouldn't normally be the best option for
(05:47):
a wide release in India because you get censorship problems.
But they are releasing these films to the sort of
lower budget uh you know, the the rural theaters and
things like that, where you're not getting the sort of
big budget stuff where you can kind of get away
with some of that.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
How the World Remade, How the World Remade? Hollywood Global
Interpretations of sixty five iconic films and Glazier is with us.
And did any of these filmmakers get rich?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yes, maybe not rich, but you know, there's the one
of the most famous ones is the Turkish Star Wars,
which steals footage from Star Wars and also music from
Indiana Jones and a bunch of other films. The whole
story is kind of a Flash Gordon sort of thing,
so it's really kind of a hodgepodge. But it's become
kind of infamous as one of the worst movies ever made,
(06:44):
which I think is not fair because I think it's
it's wild and wonderful and relentlessly entertaining.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
So you watched you watched most of these?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Yes, Oh yeah, I watched. I watched so many of them.
And uh, you know that film came out and and
you know, it bought the director a new car, It
paid off the offices of the film company. So yeah,
these movies made money. I mean not all of them.
Some of them tanked. There's an Indian Harry Potter movie
that just made back twenty percent of its budget or something.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And that was my next question. We're not talking just
old films like Batman and Superman. I mean, are they
still doing this?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
They are, but we're now in an era where they
kind of can't get away with doing it on the
qt They kind of have to really pay for the rights.
They may still remake it in a different way, but
there's more scrutiny.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And I would think there are more larger Hollywood studios
that are willing to produce those versions for the different
languages and the different cultures because they ultimately get the
money out of that.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
That is exactly right. And Disney's in China right now
doing co productions, and they did the High School Musical China.
There's a lot of companies that are working with Indian
companies to do remakes. There was an Indian remake of
that Tom Cruise Cameron Diaz movie Night and Day that
came out not too long ago.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
And we're seeing it in television too. I mean, how
many of our current television shows are inspired by a
British original?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Oh? Absolutely, so many.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, which is a lot easier understandable than.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yes. And well, and you know, a lot of us
are kind of aware of all of the ways in
which Hollywood remakes international films, a lot of the Japanese
war films and so forth, and I kind of wanted
to turn the mirror around and see how our culture
was reinterpreted.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And he goes backwards and does just that, how the
world remade Hollywood Global Interpretations of sixty five iconic films
and interesting and amusing read from Ed Glazier. And if
you're a film, if you're a fan of cinema, you
will be a fan of this book. And I thank
you for joining.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Us, sir, absolutely, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation
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