Shockingly, the 1991 remake of ‘Whatever Happened To Baby Jane’ is a blast—and even gayer than the original
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In the spirit of Thanksgiving, this week’s column revisits a real family affair: The 1991 made-for-TV remake of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?There are many reasons why a film becomes a queer classic—the kind our community will quote, reference and pull from on a regular basis, appealing to our very particular sensibilities: Performances that are as large as they are intimate and raw.
Biting, razor-sharp lines of dialogue. Themes that speak to the socially outcast, or those longing for something more. We’ve covered many of these classics in this column before.Which is why it’s so tricky and risky (some would say impossible) to remake a classic.
So many of these elements are so difficult to capture on their own—let alone all in a single movie—that even an attempt feels ill-fated at best, and completely doomed at worst.
In the case of one of the most beloved, controversial, quotable, and historically rich queer classics, how does the idea of a remake even stand a chance?
