Thank Heaven For Little Girls

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I had to go back and give a look-see at what the last thing I'd heard about director David Gordon Green's Suspiria remake was, since it's been coming and going news-wise for several years now. The last thing I posted was about how he's got the rights to the classic score by Goblin, without which - Witch! Witch! - this could not properly have anything to do with Suspiria. Well he's talking about his ideas for the film again, this time in a chat with Complex magazine, and this bit caught my eye:

Complex: Considering how the Hollywood system works, it seems like the success of Black Swan might have pushed studio executives to jump on something like a Suspiria remake. Has Black Swan’s success made the process of getting the project on a fast track any easier?

David Gordon Green: Well, there’s a couple of things. One, I was actually going to make Suspiria with Natalie [Portman] a few years ago, but ended up pushing it to do Your Highness, and once she stepped into Black Swan it definitely made me not want to do what I originally had in mind; I didn’t want to make the Natalie version anymore. So I re-envisioned it. My version of Suspiria doesn’t have anything to do with ballet at all; it’s an all girls’ boarding school that doesn’t have the dance element, so there’s no real conflict there.

It did inspire me to think, “Well, I want to go younger now. I want this to be about 14, 15-year-old girls, rather than women who are Natalie’s age.” It made not want to do what Black Swan kind of did with the psychology and thriller elements of older characters. If anything, I want to focus on the younger, more naïve kinds of characters—the wide-eyed, Snow White version of the movie, rather than a more sophisticated, sexual version of it.

I don't know if he can get this movie made with 14-year old girls in the roles, ya know? He goes on to say he'd want to keep "as much of that hardcore edge as possible, otherwise, why do it?" but man... Suspiria is really brutal, dude. Apparently a couple of years makes a big difference - oh it's fine to watch 18-year old girls get slaughtered, but 14? Heavens, no! I don't know. What do y'all think?

In related news, happy 71st birthday Dario Argento! For your birthday this year I will chisel away a little bit of my skepticism about your new Dracula movie and not say anything negative. Make a good movie! I totally want you to!