"How much love, sex, fun and friendship can a person take?"

The Big Chill was an 1983 film starring Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, and Jeff Goldblum - about a group of friends who get together for a weekend to mourn the loss of a friend, and reminisce about the college years, when radicalism and idealism were still a part of their lives.  Some have called it self-indulgent, elitist, and a tale of 60s-hippie-turned-80s-yuppie, but I call it, simply wonderful.

And Regina King, AKA Southland's Detective Adams and 24's Sandra Palmer (relax, I said Sandra, not Sherry) agrees as she will produce the all-black-cast remake for Screen Gems.



In this period of constant remakes and adaptations, will this work?

If the format is the same, that means this group of college friends will be reminiscing about their activism in the 90s?  Reports mention that Lawrence Kasdan's original script, focusing on the transition of these friends into what they perceive as a less appealing version of themselves, will be followed fairly closely, leaving open the questions, What did we protest in the 90s?  What was critical in African American culture in the 90s?  Have we changed radically?

I do agree that there has been no definitive Generation X film - the sixties had American Graffiti, the seventies, Dazed and Confused or maybe Almost Famous, the eighties The Big Chill, and the nineties...?  Will this be it?

Should it involve idealism and regret like the original?  Or focus on, in the words of Hank Moody, "No internet, cell phones, texting, tweeting, twattering, twittering, movies were a buck, gas was 10 cents a gallon, blow jobs were free, speaking of which Clinton was in the White House, Nirvana was on the radio, and I had yet to fuck up the best thing that ever happened to me."

Early reports have suggested Kasdan's themes will remain, and maybe even the stellar Motown soundtrack of the original, but according to one top critic (me), this won't work.

But it could.  If idealism and radicalism were scrapped, and a film was made focusing on the technology revolution, as described above, THAT would work, that would make sense.  The lack of privacy, the lack of "real" connections, the need for instant gratification and constant approval, the individual's creation of multiple avatars and web personas, that could be interesting.

I do love Regina King, so I have faith.  But I have a lot of questions.

Should we be remaking this in the first place?

What soundtrack do you want to hear?

What new elements might an all-black cast add?

What themes do you think will work?