It seems that remakes of ‘80s TV shows are the next big thing. The A-Team is about to go before the cameras. Yesterday, it was announced that T.J. Hooker will be dusting off his toupee. And today it was confirmed that the long-mooted big-screen Baywatch will, at long last, run along the beach of cinema in slow motion, its bountiful breasts jiggling around like two stupendous zeppelins full of…
Sorry, got carried away there. Anyway, long story short: Paramount has brought on Jeremy Garelick, he of, erm, The Break-Up fame, to write and direct the adaptation of The Hoff’s finest hour, otherwise known as the show about lifeguards that launched the careers of ten of its biggest stars: Pamela Anderson, Yasmine Bleeth, Erika Eleniak, Donna D’Errico and Tracy Bingham.
Garelick is hot property in Hollywood right now – he did a polish on The Hangover, which has made approximately eight squillion dollars at the US box office. So Paramount have asked him to work his raunchy magic on one of their biggest brand names, a property held in such high esteem by new boss, Adam Goodman, that he brought it with him when he left DreamWorks.
The movie will also represent Garelick’s directorial debut. He got the gig when Paramount asked him to rewrite the existing script, an action-heavy piece by Jay Scherick and David Ronn. Garelick told Variety that, even though he had never seen the show, he saw an opportunity to do a broad, risqué ensemble comedy in the vein of his childhood faves, Stripes and Police Academy.
Now we’re impressed. A grown man admitting that not only had he never seen an episode of Baywatch (Chandler Bing would not be happy) is bold, but further revealing that he was going to adapt the show anyway? That takes balls the size of The Hoff’s head.
And it could start a new trend: writers adapting books without having read them. Directors turning up on set without having read the script. We like this Jeremy Garelick: he’s a trendsetter, a risk-taker, a mover and a shaker, and exactly the sort of guy this transcendent, zeitgeist-defining movie needs.
Garelick secured the job when he went ahead and wrote the first act on spec. "Rather than trying to pitch the tone, I figured it would be easier to write the first act to convey who these characters were," he tells Variety. Again, a bold and unexpected move – ‘characters’ in a Baywatch movie? Clearly, he hasn’t seen the show...
Of course, now he has the tricky job of writing the second and third acts. But our suggestion is that he sets Final Draft on Autowrite, heads out and soaks up some rays while the words ‘jiggle’, ‘bouncy’ and ‘Apocalypse’ appear on the screen, as if by magic.