Footloose For You and Me

By Brodie Lancaster / April 12th, 2011 in Culture / Los Angeles / 453 views

We’ve all spent lots of time atop our film-loving high horses bemoaning the Hollywood studios’ tendency to take our favourite classic films, change the script, add some 17-year-old Disney stars to the cast and release them as summer blockbusters year after year. When was the last time we thought to do anything about it, though?

Upon hearing that the 1984 classic Footloose was being remade by Hustle and Flow director Craig Brewer for a 2010 release, David Seger and Tim Marklevitz—two film-savvy pals from Los Angeles—decided to rally together 58 of their film-making friends to re-create the 54 scenes from the film for The Footloose Remake.

“We were fed up,” they say of their motivation behind the project, “The Hollywood remake machine was going to take another solid movie, put it through the ringer, and make a buck from a younger generation. We decided “Let’s beat them to the punch. Let’s do this remake our way.”…Originally slated to release in June 2010, director complications have pushed the release of The New Studio Remake Footloose back to 2011. Hollywood can’t make it by 2010? We can. Our fifty-four filmmaker The Footloose Remake will hit Los Angeles in June, taking the place of Paramount’s release. Let’s undermine the Hollywood remake machine.”

The Remake has been making its way through independent cinemas in the US for some time now, and has just been uploaded to Vimeo for the rest of us to enjoy! Featured in the full-length film are 33 actors playing Ren (the role Kevin Bacon made famous), 15 actors playing Rev. Moore and 27 actors playing Ariel. Included the in 58 filmmakers (listed in full below) are our pal Erik Beck and Chris Cantwell, whose penultimate scene is, hands-down, our favourite of the film.

Scroll down for the brilliant letter Seger and Marklevitz sent to Paramount regarding the project.