Filmmaker Michel Gondry serves up another bizarre tale with the twisted comedy Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black and Mos Def. Jerry (Black) and Mike (Mos Def) are best friends who wind up remaking an odd assortment of movies when Jerry accidently erases all the VHS tapes in the old-fashioned, neighborhood video store where Mike works. Mike’s employer doesn’t rent DVDs, so the fact Jerry - an accident prone mechanic - wipes out all the tapes means customers have nothing left to rent. Neither Mike nor Jerry want the store to go out of business, so of course the only thing to do is re-film each and every movie any customer wants to rent.
Writer/director Gondry was fascinated with the idea of a couple of best friends thinking their only option once they erased these movies was to reshoot them. “I was very excited about these characters who are so wrapped into their minds that they really think this character, played by Mia (Farrow) is so off everything that's happening that she would be confused by it. To me, it's funny because you put two characters into an impossible situation and they use the most absurd solution. Because it's so absurd, it succeeds against all expectations. More important than that, I already had this philosophy to think that people could enjoy better movies if they made them themselves - because you're in it. It's fun to watch and your friends are in it and you made it… There is something about fabricating or building something and then enjoying it. I think people forget about that because everything is already fabricated for them.”
Gondry was very choosy when it came to deciding which films would be remade in Be Kind Rewind. Some were obvious choices. Others Gondry wanted to do didn’t fit into the movie because they aren’t available on VHS and therefore wouldn’t work within the plot. New Line’s Snakes on a Plane wouldn’t work because it’s too recent and doesn’t exist on VHS. “We wanted to have the new King Kong. In fact, we wanted to show it on VHS and they said, 'No, you can't show it on VHS because you have to show it on DVD.' And it would not work because you cannot erase a DVD by magnetic fields,” explained Gondry. “I think it goes further than that. I'm not nostalgic from film or video or whatever. I don't really care for that. One, you can't erase DVDs. Secondly, the DVDs are a little complicated for people from generations. Like my mother has difficulty to operate her own DVD player. So that is an explanation why a man like Danny Glover's character would continue to rent [VHS].”
“I didn't have precise rules about it,” admitted Gondry. “I just want them to have films that everybody has seen or remember the title and what it is about. Some of the films, like Rush Hour 2 or Boyz N The Hood were suggested by Dave Chappelle when we were working on Block Party. I told him about my concept and he told me, 'Oh, you should do this movie and this movie.' He was pretty excited about this idea, so I took those ideas from him.”
With Mia Farrow onboard the film, the 1968 classic horror film Rosemary’s Baby might have been not only a good fit, but one audiences would get a kick out of seeing remade by the video store clerk and his mechanic friend. But Gondry didn’t go there because he tried not to be, in his words, “too self-reflective.” “That would have taken people out of the reality I was trying to create,” said Gondry. “Even though it's a world that's constructed, it wasn't constructed to me. To me, it's realistic. But Mia, if you think of her as being part of the movie in the store, then they would not think of her being this lady she's portraying. So I didn't want to interfere too much with that.”
One film Gondry tried but was unsuccessful at obtaining the rights to use was Back to the Future. “I couldn't get,” said Gondry. “I think that’s the main one. It was suspenseful because for a long time we didn't know if we could get the rights to do Ghostbusters. It was mainly to use the artwork but I needed the artwork because they are basing their remake on the box, basically. That's part of the humor of the situation, but that's how they are. The movie basically reflects what's on the box. …We needed to show the artwork and that's where the legal problem comes in. If you want to do any spoof or remake, you don't have to have permission.”
Hoping to get permission Gondry had figured out how to do the Back to the Future segment but never got to film it. “I wrote it on five pages and I tried to just remember, I think I'd seen the movie five or 10 years ago last time. But I've seen it many times. I love this movie. I tried to find how I could tell this movie in five minutes without really missing important parts of the plot. It's a very good exercise because you're really down to what's essential or what you remember. I think by doing that, even if you reproduce a movie that exists, you find yourself in a way, it's your memory and you're attached to one part or another part because it corresponds to something you have.”
