AMERICAN remakes of foreign films are so commonplace these days that they hardly seem worth mentioning.
'Funeral' Trailers
Mr. Dinklage in the British version (far right, with, from left, Andy Nyman, Rupert Graves and Matthew Macfadyen).
But “Death at a Funeral” is a rather unlikely redo of a British comedy of manners. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, arrives just three years after the original was released in the United States. This time Chris Rock leads an ensemble consisting mostly of African-American actors, including Martin Lawrence, Danny Glover and Tracy Morgan. And the remake is directed by Neil LaBute, a white director and screenwriter best known for making misanthropic and, in the view of some critics, misogynistic indie films and plays.
Welcome to Extreme Makeover: Hollywood Edition, brought to you by Clint Culpepper, president of Screen Gems. That’s the successful low-budget genre division of Sony Pictures responsible for films like “Dear John,” “Resident Evil” and “Stomp the Yard.”
The notion to refashion “Death at a Funeral” (2007), directed by Frank Oz — about a funeral where everything that can go wrong does — came to Mr. Rock as he drove to the Beverly Hills Hotel for a meeting with Mr. Culpepper. “I didn’t have anything to pitch,” he recalled, “but I came up with the idea, thinking Clint would kind of dismiss it.”
Mr. Culpepper did no such thing. Soon Mr. Rock and Aeysha Carr, a writer Mr. Rock had worked with on the sitcom “Everybody Hates Chris,” were adapting the script.
Most of the elements remain intact: A family patriarch dies, and the clan converges on his home for the service. There’s the prodigal son (played in the new version by Mr. Lawrence), a famed novelist who’s flown in from Manhattan; his envious younger brother (Mr. Rock), an aspiring novelist who still lives with his parents; and plenty of secrets that are revealed. And as in any good funeral farce, there’s an uninvited guest (Peter Dinklage in both versions).
“We had to de-Britishize it, Americanize it and write new comedy within the confines of the big jokes,” Mr. Rock said. Their principal changes were tied to language, since the plot stayed the same. Still, the Writers Guild granted credit for the new script to the original’s screenwriter, Dean Craig, a decision no one seems to dispute.
“Why would you change it? It’s a great story,” said Mr. Culpepper, who compares remaking “Death at a Funeral” — which, according to Box Office Mojo, took in less than $9 million in the United States but nearly $40 million elsewhere — to reviving a classic Broadway musical. “Would you change ‘Gypsy,’ or would you just recast it? Four different women have won Tony Awards for remaking ‘Gypsy.’ ”
When selecting a director, Mr. Culpepper branched out from the usual comedy suspects and went with Mr. LaBute, whose work is often comic but of a very dark sort, as in the polarizing relationship films “Your Friends & Neighbors” and “In the Company of Men.” Mr. Culpepper and Mr. LaBute had recently worked together on “Lakeview Terrace,” a thriller about race.
At first Mr. LaBute was hesitant to take on a remake, especially since he’d done one of the British cult horror film “The Wicker Man.” That 2006 remake, starring Nicolas Cage, was savaged by critics. So, Mr. LaBute said, he’s expecting plenty of comments about “the great English ‘Death at a Funeral’ and the crass American remake.”
While Mr. LaBute is best known for a particular style in his stage plays and screenplays, his film work as a director has a broader range. When “Death at a Funeral” was presented to him, “I saw it as an opportunity to show that I can deal with a big cast and something that’s funny and not make it darker than it is,” he said. “It was very hard to get anyone to listen to me when I said, ‘I’d like to do a comedy.’ ”
Having him on board is one thing keeping “Death at a Funeral” from being pegged as a black movie. “We were not gearing it toward a black audience,” Mr. LaBute said. “We were gearing it toward the widest audience we could.”
Together with Mr. Rock, with whom he’d worked on the Renée Zellweger black comedy “Nurse Betty” (2000), Mr. LaBute secured actors who agreed to take reduced fees in exchange for a share of the profits. (The movie’s budget was $20 million.)
Mr. Rock sought some friends for the cast, including Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Glover, with whom he worked on “Lethal Weapon 4.” But “Clint took me out of my hire all your friends do the ‘Chris Rock Show’ movie,” he said. The cast also includes Zoë Saldana (“Avatar”), James Marsden (the “X-Men” movies), Luke Wilson (“My Super Ex-Girlfriend”) and Columbus Short (“Cadillac Records”). “I think it helped me out a lot.”
For Mr. Culpepper, all the reasons to remake “Death at a Funeral” are captured by one joke that Aaron (Mr. Rock) delivers to Ryan (Mr. Lawrence): “Let me get this straight: Our father was bromantically involved with a guy that could fit in his pocket, and you’re mad that he’s white?”
“The idea alone is hysterical,” Mr. Culpepper said of the moment (revealed in previews for the movie) when the brothers learn that their newly deceased father was having an affair with a man. “It would be funny with two white guys, but I thought it would be even funnier with two black guys.”
Why? There’s more secrecy among African-Americans about being gay, Mr. Culpepper said, adding, “They call it ‘on the down low.’” And the joke gets even lower if their father’s lover is a white dwarf. “The real down low,” he added, laughing.
In the initial reading for the American script the black actor Tony Cox (“Bad Santa”) played the role, but Mr. Culpepper thought the part should be played by a white actor. That’s how Mr. Dinklage became what Mr. LaBute called the “connective tissue” to the British version.
“At first I was a little protective of the original,” Mr. Dinklage said. “How could they?” But now, he said, he wonders why he wasn’t asked to be in “Daddy Cool,” a 2009 Bollywood version of the story. “You could do it in the Amazon rain forest. You could explore all the different styles of funerals across the world. I plan to do this movie in every country across the world.”
