In movie theaters across the country, audiences have been experiencing a blast from the past. 

While movie patrons spend millions this weekend on such recent releases as "The Four Feathers," "The Ring," "Red Dragon" and "Swept Away," only some will realize how deep their cinematic roots are. 

The uncanny parallels between "Red Dragon" and Michael Mann's 1986 film "Manhunter" are equivalent to the similarities between the new film "The Ring," starring Naomi Watts, and the hit 1998 Japanese horror classic, "Ringu." 

These are just two examples of the alarming trend of movie remakes that have taken Hollywood studios by storm. 

"It has been an excuse for the lack of imagination on the part of the studio," says Harry Knowles, 'Ain't-It-Cool-News' Web master. 

Knowles, however, is not completely against the idea of remaking movies. He compares the concept of remaking movies to theater productions. 

"Just because William Shakespeare is dead, doesn't mean you can't make anymore productions of 'Romeo and Juliet,' " he says. "There are lots of shoddy productions of 'Romeo and Juliet' out there, and lots of people go to these productions and complain." 

Arguably one of the more "shoddy" movie remakes has been Madonna's "Swept Away." Directed by her husband Guy Ritchie ("Snatch"), the new version is a remake of the 1974 Italian masterpiece "Swept Away ... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August," which starred Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini. 

The new version features Adriano Giannini, Giancarlo's son, who fills in for the role that his father made famous more than 20 years ago. But regardless of Giannini's casting, the film has received less-than-flattering reviews from film critics. 

"People are basically buying the title," Knowles says. 

"A remake of 'Gone with the Wind' would probably be a bad idea, unless someone has an ingenious vision that would make it work." 

Movie director Jonathan Demme ("Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia") might disagree. 

"I love remakes. I think it's very exciting," he says. 

Part of Demme's enthusiasm might be because his upcoming film, "The Truth About Charlie," is one. 

"Charlie" is a contemporary version of the 1963 Stanley Donen film "Charade," which starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. 

In Demme's version, Grant and Hepburn are replaced by Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton. 

"I was asked by a reporter over the summer about remakes and they said, 'So do you think anything is fair game?' and I said 'Sure, why not?' " Demme says. 

"And then the reporter asked, 'What about "Citizen Kane?" ' and I thought to myself for a second, then I pictured, Spike Lee's Citizen Kane. And I said, yeah, "Citizen Kane!" Especially 'Citizen Kane.'" 

Demme's film is not the last of the remakes this year. On Nov. 27, Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris," starring George Clooney, orbits into theaters nationwide. The film is Soderbergh's adaptation of legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 art film of the same title about mysterious happenings onboard a space station. 

And the saga continues next year. 

A Michael Bay (director of "Armageddon") produced remake of the horror classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" has already gotten underway and will star Jessica Biel ("7th Heaven") and feature the music of Marilyn Manson. 

Biels' "Rules of Attraction" director Roger Avary has also been recently attatched to remake George Romero's zombie flick "Dawn of the Dead," and the odd pairing of Michael Douglas, Albert Brooks and "Van Wilder's" Ryan Reynolds will headline a remake of the 1979 Peter Falk comedy "The In-Laws," titled, "Till Death Do Us Part." 

Furthermore, if negotiations are successful, Chris Tucker will follow in the footsteps of Peter Sellers and Roberto Benigni and star in a modern version of "The Pink Panther." 

While the idea of Tucker playing "Panther" might sound appealing, Knowles is less enthusiastic about a rumored update of Sidney Poitier's "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" with Bernie Mac. 

"Today, with that film, it's less of a ground-breaking thing," he says. 

Knowles also says he has been less than impressed with the recent scripts for a remake of Fritz Lang's German expressionist tour de force, "M," rumored to be a starring vehicle for rapper DMX. 

"They need to find directors who have a passionate love for the material," he says 

Nonetheless, most film critics will probably agree with Washington Post critic Desson Howe. 

"I think that most movies shouldn't be remade," he says. 

"I think Demme's nuts to say that 'Citizen Kane' should be remade." 

Mark Wahlberg was looking debonair wearing a black Armani suit [“They’re nice enough to give me free clothes”] and pink tie no less. Perhaps it was that Cary Grant thing. But then he has a clear disdain for those inevitable comparisons, stepping in those shoes in a very modern remake of the classic Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn film Charade. PAUL FISCHER talks to Wahlberg about "The Truth About Charlie"

Retitled The Truth about Charlie and directed by Silence of the Lambs’ Jonathan Demme, Wahlberg plays the old Grant role of a mysterious stranger trying to help the beautiful Regina Lambert [Thandie Newton] to find out not only who killed her wealthy husband on a train, but why she is a potential target herself. Wahlberg feels uncomfortable talking about filling Grant’s shoes, but it’s an inevitable starting point in a discussion relating to this film. Wahlberg insists that there was more to doing Truth about Charlie than merely stepping into Cary Grant’s shoes. “It was never about that or about: We wanna do this, and we think you’re the new Cary Grant. [Jonathan] thought I was the right guy for the part, to bring something different and interesting to the role, so I said sure.” That simple. Wahlberg admits that he wasn’t even a huge fan of the original. “I thought this is a beautiful film but not necessarily a huge fan of the script. I was a huge fan of Jonathan Demme, so I said, ‘I’ll work with this guy in whatever role. I’ll play the guy on the bus who doesn’t say anything. I think it would be a learning experience for me.’ “ Wahlberg adds that for the next couple of years, “that’s the kind of journey that I’m on, and will be on, just try to work with talented filmmakers, especially writer-directors who have very specific visions and allow me to start with their vision and learn a lot in the process. So, when I venture off on my own, I will have worked with some of the best filmmakers in the business.” 

Wahlberg loved working with his beautiful co-star Thandie Newton. Asked what makes her sexy, he grins slightly. “Everything, except the fact that she’s married. That’s a big turnoff.” The interesting thing about Mark’s character is that neither the audience nor Thandie’s character really knows who this guy is. He’s teasing and tantalising the audience. For Wahlberg, that was fun to play. “Yeah, it was a lot of fun but it’s a fine line to walk too because I always wanted to push the darker side, but you have to kind of please the audience in a way and make them want to see the characters get together. I think if you pushed it too much, there’s still something about him that’s a little dark, a little risky. So, it was really Jonathan’s job to monitor that, because I was willing to go darker because I want to do that.” 

Always shy and introspective, the 31-year old Wahlberg has often been drawn to characters that have a quiet demeanour. Perhaps that sense of quiet is part of the actor’s own natural charm. “I have my moments, but yeah, for the most part I’m pretty quiet. It’s usually like two hours of the day when I explode, then run out of gas. I think that’s just who I am, laid back, but I have my moments, definitely. It’s usually if I have a drink or two,” he says, again, half smilingly. During those “moments” to which the actor refers, Wahlberg sees himself as having a “lot of bark but not much bite as I’m not trying to impress the wrong people any more. When I was young, I was a knucklehead and I did a lot of stupid things, but I’ve just kinda grown up, things kind of slowed down. The only thing that I’m bummed out about is the fact that my metabolism has slowed down. I put on 45 pounds to do this project that didn’t happen, and I had to lose it all for this thing I’m doing now, and it wasn’t as easy as it used to be.” The project he was going to do, he says with mild bitterness, “was this thing called Pride And Glory, this cop drama that I was going to do last January, and about a month before we were about to shoot it fell apart. It’s something that hopefully I’m still going to be able to do because it’s a fantastic piece of material. I get to kind of let loose and play a bad guy which I haven’t done since Fear.” 

Before he started acting, Mark Wahlberg was best known as Marky Mark, the pants-dropping rapper who attained fame and notoriety with his group the Funky Bunch. In the tradition of Will Smith and Ice Cube, Wahlberg has made a successful transition from music to film, garnering particular praise for his role in Boogie Nights. 

Born June 5, 1971, Wahlberg had a troubled early life. One of nine children, he dropped out of school at 16 and committed a number of minor felonies. After working various odd jobs, Wahlberg briefly joined brother Donnie and his group New Kids on the Block before forming his own, Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch. The group had widespread popularity for a time, most notably with its 1992 hit single "Good Vibrations." However, it was Wahlberg himself who received the lion's share of attention, whether it was for the homophobia controversy that surrounded him for a time, or for the 1992 Calvin Klein ad campaign featuring him wearing nothing more than his underwear, Kate Moss, and an attitude. 

In 1993, Wahlberg turned his attentions to acting with a role in The Substitute. The film, co-starring a then-unknown Natasha Gregson Wagner, was a critical and commercial failure, but Wahlberg's next project, 1994's Renaissance Man with Danny De Vito, gave him the positive notices that would increase with the release of his next film, The Basketball Diaries (1995). Although the film received mixed reviews, many critics praised Wahlberg's performance as Mickey, Leonardo DiCaprio's friend and fellow junkie. Following Diaries, Wahlberg appeared in Fear (1996) in the role of Reese Witherspoon's psychotic boyfriend. 

It was with the release of Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights in 1997 that Wahlberg finally received across-the-board respect for his commanding yet unassuming performance as busboy-turned-porn star Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler. The film was nominated for three Oscars and a slew of other awards by associations ranging from the British Academy to the New York Film Critics Circle to MTV. The positive attention landed Wahlberg on a wide range of magazine covers and gave him greater Hollywood pulling power. He had, as they say, arrived. 
Wahlberg's follow-up to Boogie Nights was 1998's The Big Hit, an action comedy that, particularly in the wake of Boogie Night's acclaim, proved to be a disappointment. This disappointment was hardly lessened by the relative critical and commercial shortcomings of Wahlberg's next film, The Corruptor (1999). Though he gained positive notice for his role in David O. Russell' s unconventional war film Three Kings the same year, the film was only a moderate success, paving the way for an even more dramatic turn in the downbeat true story of the ill-fated Andrea Gail, The Perfect Storm, in 2000. 

The following year found Wahlberg filling some big shoes -- and receiving some hefty criticism as a result -- with his lead role in Tim Burton's much-anticipated remake of Planet of the Apes, the first of several remakes the actor would star in, including Truth about Charlie and next year’s The Italian Job. He doesn’t quite know why he is suddenly being associated with remakes of classic films and merely shrugs it off. “It’s always the same story. What is different, is just how it’s told anyway.” Like The Italian Job. This time he is stepping into the shoes of Michael Caine, who starred in the original crime classic. “It’s not a remake, just loosely based on that film, and co-stars Edward Norton, Donald Sutherland and Charlize Theron. It’s a great piece of material, a great spin on a great movie with a young director, who has similar taste in material.” 

As busy as his professional life is, Wahlberg does try and relax and have a life of interests outside filmmaking. “Not in this order, but my work, my spirituality, my maturing as an adult, really noticing changes. Things that I’ve always talked about but have now actually happened. Everything. Food, wine, women, sports.” They are of paramount importance to this much grounded of Hollywood stars whose life changed when he went to France to shoot Truth about Charlie. “I broke up with my girlfriend a week after being there, then fell in love four or five times,” Wahlberg laughingly recalls. “But that’s life. The way I look at life now, it’s not about who’s trying to get me. It’s not about well, I’ve got to beat the shit out of this guy before he beats the shit out of me. I’ve just grown up.” And as he has grown up, Wahlberg has become more spiritual. “Everything has happened because of my spirituality which is not something that I certainly try to advertise but just something that means the world to me. I have a hard time talking about it because people always think this is just some sort of image that I’m trying to present and it’s just who I am. I had a lot of wonderful people in my life early on; I just didn’t realize who they are. I was always trying to impress people that I thought were important, which were those guys at the corner, the older guys. Thank God for those people and thank God that they never gave up on me. So, when I realized that I was basically being an idiot and realized what I needed to do to get back on the right track, it was just to refocus my faith.” 

It is all well and good to live in a world of hindsight but asked what he would he would do differently given the chance, the actor sips some water and contemplates his response. “ I wouldn’t do anything differently. There were a couple of nights when I was 16 or 17 when I would have stayed in the house and watched television, but I think everything happened for a reason. If I grew up out here and my family was normal and I went to a great school, I don’t think I would be the person that I am today. It was a tough road getting to where I am, but looking back now, it seems nothing. I’m 31 years old, I have a life ahead of me, I have an opportunity to make a difference in kids like mine lives, and that’s wonderful.” Wahlberg adds that he is making a difference “just by going back. I never had anybody to look up to. There was a guy at the boy’s club who dedicated his whole life to bettering these kids’ lives, but here’s a guy who’s just not cool like the guys on the street. He doesn’t have a nice car. I never saw him with a good looking girl. He doesn’t have nice clothes and all the things that I thought I wanted. But he’s still there today. These kids can relate to me. They know that I’m one of them and they know the fact that I’m there and still very much one of them, it inspires them in so many different ways.” 

Much has changed since Wahlberg first performed as a rapper all those years ago. That was then, this is now, and his music was a part of his life, but no more. “I did stuff below the radar for some of the films that I’ve made such as The Big Hit, Renaissance Man and Fear. I kind of joke around but I have no interest to return to music. A lot of people now, including my record company has approached me to do another record. Things are going good on this front, they’re like, ‘Hey, you know, Will Smith’s record was a big hit last year.’ I get embarrassed going on MTV to promote a film. It’s just low. Thank God kids are getting so much smarter.” 

These days, acting is Wahlberg’s focussed and concludes that he remains amazed at how far he has gone and how he has developed as an actor. “It IS really amazing but at the same time it just seems very natural too and just the path I was supposed to have taken. A lot of people that have been put in my life were put there for a reason, the good and the bad ones.” 

Beautiful 30-year old Thandie Newton is very picky as to what she does. Motherhood, she says, is a strong criterion in her decision-making process. “I went to see Red Dragon the other night, and after the first five minutes, I felt physically sick and just terrified, because I genuinely felt the horror of what that was being implied. A family, children, and it’s like we are able to just shut down enough of us to be able to enjoy it, or find it intriguing. I just can’t go there anymore because of the fact that I’m a mother, knowing that kids are MUCH more sensitive, so I wouldn’t want to do something like that.” 

Married to writer Oliver Parker, they have a 2-year old daughter, Ripley, both of whom were with the actress while she was shooting her latest film, The Truth About Charlie, admitting that with her family around her, in that most romantic of cities, “It’s hard not to be romantic and was quite extraordinary. My husband and I had a beautiful time once when I wasn’t working,” she says, smilingly and she would go for “walks with my baby. The Luxemburg Gardens were just right around the corner from us, and we would go there. Whenever I felt stressed or just needed to relax, I would head to the Luxemburg Gardens because they had the most tranquil atmosphere, and I would sit there with my baby. It was in the summer so it was beautiful. To be in any city, when you are working on a film, that has a decent budget, isn’t a bad thing. We had a car and a lovely guy who drove us everywhere and would sometimes take us to restaurants if we needed to. I felt like we had the key to the city.” 

The Truth About Charlie, directed by Jonathan Demme, is a remake of the 60s classic Charade which starred the legendary Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Newton plays the latter’s character in this very French New Wave remake, playing Regina Lambert, wife of a wealthy businessman whose murder on a train leads a group of would-be killers on her own trail searching for some missing money. Mark Wahlberg steps into the old Grant role of a mysterious stranger whose intentions are consistently unclear. 

The trick for Newton was to avoid comparisons with Hepburn and make the role her own. “I just didn’t think about it and it’s only now that it occurs to me that it is obviously an issue that’s of significance. It was so not significant when we were making it”, explains Newton. “Demme is such a good filmmaker, why would he copy anyone else? So, I knew that it was going to be something that stood out on its own. Thus it was important for me, as it was for Jonathan, to get that, and it wasn’t even to try and not do similar things to Charade, but rather: Let’s just see how we go, see how it evolves, and if things come out to be the same, or if things turn out to be different, it is purely accidental. I also think that maybe I was in denial about what the ramifications of doing something that had been made before, but I wasn’t flattering myself, since I wasn’t cast because of any similarities. I knew that by virtue of the fact that Jonathan wanted to update it, make it completely different, just depart from it totally, that in casting me, he was doing that too, departing, moving on, and you see with Mark Wahlberg, that he’s so not like Cary Grant, his age, his manner, there’s nothing like it.” 

Thandie previously worked with Demme on the commercially disastrous Beloved, which starred Oprah Winfrey. It is clear that Demme and Newton were keen to re-team. “Because we had had such a great connection on Beloved, we worked really well together, and then that was a bit of a more technical thing, before we got to know each other really well after Beloved. We also have a similar sense of humour, the same outlook on life, the same values, and friends. I think if you can work with someone with whom you work well together, but who you get along well with, and have a laugh with, that’s so important.” 

Although Truth About Charlie is a big studio film, Newton’s attraction of doing this, was “more to do with working with Jonathan again, because I knew that with him directing, it was going to be very different, and wouldn’t fall into the same remake that some movies fall into.” For Newton, the work, not the career has always remained of paramount importance to the actress. Hinting that she didn’t particularly enjoy the Mission:Impossible experience, she decided against Charlie’s Angels in favour of a smaller British film, It was an Accident, written by her husband. Hollywood fame holds no interest to this intelligent Cambridge graduate, and lives with her family in London. While Jonathan Demme calls Newton underappreciated as an actress, Thandie disagrees. “I don’t feel like that at all. I think there are so many reasons why people get cast, and you can’t ever know those reasons or predict all those reasons and making a film is a very complicated affair. You know, it’s a lot of money going into it, so if a stingy old director, isn’t confident in the person that they’ve cast, they shouldn’t go with them. Whether they make a mistake with me, I never ever feel put out if I’m not getting a role, or not being considered. Like is too short to be sort of analysing what you are ultimately never going to know. Also, I am really glad the way things have worked out, and I feel like I have reached a point now where there are some things I won’t do, because I am not interested in doing them.” 

It was the Australian film Flirting, starring Nicole Kidman and featuring a complete unknown Naomi Watts, that put Newton on the map. Still friends with both women, Newton had no idea at the time she shot that film, at age 18, that she would still continue to embrace an acting career, years later. “I think most actors feel like, God, maybe I won’t be doing this next year, even though there may not be a next year.” 

Enjoying motherhood, Newton continues to be selective as to what she will do. “If I’m going to work on something, it’s going to have to be something that it is creatively satisfying, that is going to interest me, for all the reasons why you think that someone would choose anything. And, because of my daughter, I don’t want to be doing everything I can, because I don’t want to be away from her too much.” Motherhood has obviously changed her life, she says, gushingly. “I feel very rooted. Having lived out my adolescence in this business, it’s not the best place to do that, really, and having a child, was like being introduced to myself. When you have a child, you have to feel like you’re the best person that you can be, because so much of what they learn is by example. And it’s not like I read this, it’s seems obvious, but it’s starling how much you throw away. How much stuff isn’t important, how much, the stuff I was preoccupied with, the grievances I had, just my preoccupations, my time I would waste. Everything is very simple now, and very, much more focussed. I am not fearful of anything.” 

In this season brimming with remakes and sequels, some of them are going to shine and some are going to fall flat. This one does a little of both, with most of it sitting happily in the former category. It's a remake and sprucing up of Stanley Donen's 1963 comic thriller Charade, which featured a charming and bubbly Audrey Hepburn and a charming and suave (and much older) Cary Grant. The two leads in this go-round Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton (most recently seen in Mission: Impossible II) are also charming, and she's bubbly, but he's more stylish than suave, and both are much closer in age. 

And both are quite good at what they're doing here (even though he scowls too much), which is remaining pretty darn believable in the midst of a story that keeps threatening to careen out of control, but always seems to get reeled back in just before that happens. 

Like its predecessor, it's set in Paris. But this is not the urbane, yet still quaint Paris of the '60s that Donen placed his stars in front of. Instead, Demme and his longtime cinematographer Tak Fujimoto have made it a Paris that's all flash and glitz, and the characters aren't paraded in front of it as if it were a background; they're tossed right into the middle of it, getting caught up in its swirling buzz. 

The story, for the most part, and a few bits of the dialogue, are the same. The lovely Regina (Newton) happens to meet the handsome Joshua (Wahlberg) while on vacation in the tropics, they chat in a slightly flirtatious manner, then go their separate ways she back home to Paris where she discovers that Charlie, the husband she was about to divorce has been murdered and the apartment they shared has literally been stripped clean, leaving her with the clothes on her back; and he to who knows where. 

But he soon just happens to show up in Paris, finds out the news about her husband, and reappears in her life, ready to help her through whatever rough times are ahead. And rough times are indeed ahead. The cops, under the leadership of Commandant Dominique (the broodingly attractive Christine Boisson) start asking questions, American operative Mr. Bartholomew (Tim Robbins, with a sloppy in-and-out accent) suggests a great deal of money has gone missing with her husband's death, and a menacing trio of obviously bad, bad people (Ted Levine, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Joong-Hoon Park) start trailing and verbally threatening her. 

It sure is a good thing nice guy Joshua is around to offer some companionship and protection. But who exactly is this guy and how does he know exactly when to be there when he's needed? If you've seen the original, you know the answers. Even though Charade was just too darn forced in tossing out coincidence after coincidence so that it became a little annoying after a while, it was still a lot of fun, and much of that film remains absolutely memorable. 

The Truth About Charlie is a better film, constructed and played out in a jittery style, pretty much all of it with hand-held cameras, and, on the whole, a lot more fun. But that's also part of its problem. Demme's idea to make the trio of villains far less menacing than in the original eventually, in fact, endearing doesn't work. The character of Reggie, constantly being chased, and ever in a state of confusion because she's not sure who to trust, has less of an edge working against her when she starts smiling with instead of running from those who believe she knows where the money is. 

It would have been more effective if we felt more peril while watching the film, but it's probably unfair to complain when we're treated to a wonderfully odd cameo by Charles Aznavour (while his music is on the soundtrack), then treated to another and better one just before the end credits roll. Oh, and is it only me or is there a blatant visual nod to Demme's The Silence of the Lambs in a prison scene in the middle of the credits? 

Before Jonathan Demme became a Hollywood A-List director, the man responsible for such films as Philadelphia, Married to the Mob, and Something Wild, and who took home an Oscar for making The Silence of the Lambs, wanted to be a veterinarian. 

"But within one week of university in Florida I had flunked out of basic college chemistry, so goodbye to that," he chuckles. 

But that incident led him indirectly to the job he has now, the most recent result of which is The Truth About Charlie, Demme's slick, hip updating of the 1963 Stanley Donen classic Charade. Demme stayed in school, but didn't have enough money to support his habit of going to movies. 

"So I wrote a review for the campus newspaper the Florida Gator the editor liked it, and I started getting into movies for free." 

Writing reviews eventually led to a job as a publicist in New York, which led to his meeting up with legendary director-producer Roger Corman, a man who was always on the lookout for new talent. It wasn't long before Corman offered him a script-writing job, then a directing job. And soon after, Demme was on his own, directing his first feature, Handle With Care." 

"I remain eternally grateful at the bizarre little twists and turns that brought me to doing something that I love doing," he says. 

When a couple of years ago, he thought it would be fun to remake one of his favorite older films, Charade, the story of a young woman who gets caught up in a series of intrigues when her husband is killed just after a load of money goes missing, he approached Donen to ask for his permission. 

"Stanley, who is an extraordinarily gracious gentleman, said you have my blessing," says Demme. "But he didn't want to know any thing about what we were doing. And to this day he has no intention of seeing the movie. It's like, 'Jonathan, I wish you all the luck in the world. I hope people love it.' He's doing his own thing, and he doesn't want this movie to become something that he needs to go around talking about." 

Then he adds, in a whisper, "But I'm convinced he's gonna go slip into the neighborhood theater. How could he not?" 

Demme, who co-wrote the film as well as directed, kept many of the original elements, even some of the same dialogue, and the same Paris setting, but pushed everything from the comparatively quaint '60s to the lightning-paced world of today. The original romantic-comic-mystery leads were Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. They're now Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton (who had the title role in Demme's Beloved). 

Newton says she had no second thoughts about taking on the Hepburn part. 

"Absolutely not," she says. "And I don't for one second compare myself to Audrey Hepburn. There's no point, she was an icon. The closest I get to her is that I have the opportunity to play a role that she played. And that for me, is a high point in my life." 

One of the biggest differences in the two films involves the trio of heavies that are following Newton, demanding that she turn over the money, even though she has no idea of its whereabouts. In the original film, they were absolutely menacing; this time around they've become almost endearing. 

"More than anything, that probably comes out of my resistance to the idea of villains," explains Demme. "I think rounded, appealing characters are ultimately more interesting. I don't know if that's true. But I didn't feel it was necessary to have villains in this movie. I thought it was important to have formidable adversaries, but I wanted to try to keep the fun of the three bad guys and take it in a different direction than Charade. 

One thing that's not different from this film or any others that Demme has directed is the fact that he keeps cameras running all the time. 

"Oh yeah. We rehearse on camera," he says. "We never ever just rehearse. I believe in the magic of spontaneity and the magic of discovery. You know, what if they get it right in rehearsal and the camera wasn't on? So we rehearse on film. We block it out so we know what the movements are going to be, so the cameraman knows what direction to point the camera in, but we never try anything remotely dramatic until we're shooting." 

An example of where that worked to the film's advantage is in a scene here Newton takes a running fall. In fact, the film features two big spills from her. 

"Actually, one of them is an accident and one isn't," says Newton, giggling. "On the one where I slipped, Jonathan sort of sheepishly said to me, 'Could you try that again?' And I did, and it worked. But the other was an out and out major wipeout. And there's nothing funnier to me than someone wiping out, as long as they haven't hurt themselves. It tickles me more than anything." 

"I have the weirdest reaction at screenings of the film when that happens," chimes in Demme. "It invariably brings this huge eruption of laughter, and part of me goes, 'Yay, they're being entertained!' And then part of me goes, 'What's wrong with these people?'" 

The first feature Littleton cut was an AFI project called Legacy in the mid-’70s, which garnered its share of good notices and effectively gave the young editor an entry to the mainstream. That early success was the jumpstart she needed, and she hasn’t slowed down since. Her outstanding career has seen a solid run of collaborations with a number of brilliant moviemakers, including Lawrence Kasdan, Robert Benton and Jonathan Demme. 

Littleton just finished Demme’s new picture, The Truth About Charlie, (her third pairing with the director), and is currently in the cutting room sculpting Kasdan’s winter release, Dreamcatcher. She recently took a breather to talk with MovieMaker about how editors "cut to genre,"serve the story, and how her experience on The Truth About Charlie gave her a new kind of freedom in the cutting room. 

Phillip Williams (MM): Jonathan Demme said that he was trying to shoot The Truth About Charlie in the style of the French New Wave— making the picture in the cinema verité style. How did you deal with the miles of footage that arrived every day?

Carol Littleton (CL): You just start cutting. I learned a long time ago, it’s just like everything—it’s just like writing—the more you think about it, the more of a stew you can get into. It’s better just to start working. The footage informs you and then you feel confident. It was just a different experience because the material that we were getting every day was just so free from all of the fetters of [film convention]: we’ve got to have the close-up, the long shot, etc. There’s a language of film that we are used to now and you think that everything is covered that way, but Jonathan said "Forget about that. Some [scenes] will have conventional coverage and others just won’t."

MM: Because of the circumstances he chose to shoot under?

CL: He just said, "I’m going to make up my mind that day."But he thinks about all of this ahead of time, who does he think he’s kidding? [laughs] That was the feeling that he wanted in the film, though. There were a lot of jump cuts. We broke all the rules the New Wave broke—and then some. It was kind of an orgy of filmmaking, at least in editing. Most of the movies I’ve worked on have been so carefully crafted and this was the time for me just to try a lot of stuff that I’ve always wanted to try. The footage was there and we had fun. 

MM: You say that the conventions of film were dispensed with. What were you bringing to that?

CL: I remember the first day that Jonathan wanted to see the film. I decided to show him the first scene he’d shot—the interrogation scene of the Thandie Newton character by the French police officer. He had said, "Don’t follow the book. Just go for the moments that work and put them together."As I got into it I got wilder and wilder—I just jump cut the thing to death. Luckily, his reaction was, "I love it!"

After that I felt that I had permission to do just about anything I wanted, and that the editing became a long process of trying different things until the parts became harmonious with each other, even if they seemed to be chaotic at first. 

MM: Bringing things into harmony with each other—it sounds like it was an intuitive process. 

CL: I guess it’s kind of hard not to be intuitive when you’ve done this for so long. [laughs]

MM: What are the sort of mental notes that you carry with you as an editor that became most relevant on this picture?

CL: I just think the fact that I was a college student around the time the New Wave was at its height. Being able to create my own homage to that style of filmmaking was, to me, amazingly liberating. 

MM: Since cutting the film, have you come away with any new ideas or thoughts about editing?

CL: I learned to allow myself more freedom to just go after the moment. If there is a wonderful moment, don’t try to reconstruct it in the editing—just let it play, let it go. I know that that is the heart of the style of the great editor, Dede Allen (Bonnie and Clyde). She brought the lexicon of the French New Wave into American filmmaking and, of course, scandalized Hollywood. So I just felt like I was walking in Dede’s shoes in doing this movie and discovered how much fun it can be to totally liberate yourself. [laughing] I’d like to bring a bit of that courage to all the film experiences that I have. The fact that we are able to work digitally makes that even easier. 

MM: In general, as an editor, do you tend to identify the genre you’re dealing with and have that inform the way you cut the picture?

CL: In some ways it does. If you’re doing a film noir like Body Heat, you want to keep within that tradition.

MM: What sort of considerations were there with Body Heat?

CL: The relationship between [William Hurt] and [Kathleen Turner]—you really had to understand the sexual manipulation. That’s a hallmark of film noir: It has to work on an emotional level. You have to believe it. But it’s not about being explicitly sexual. It’s about being suggestive. 

If you are doing a western, like Silverado—which I also did with Larry [Kasdan]—you had to acknowledge historical context. He wanted it to be about the beginning of the era, not the closing of the era. It had to be optimistic and about the conflicting agendas of the time. In [The Truth About Charlie], we had to acknowledge certain givens of the movie that inspired it, [Charade]. But from the very beginning Jonathan said, "This is going to be different.”

MM: How do you choose your battles when you don’t agree with a director?

CL: That’s part of the fun. Every day is an encounter with the film and an encounter with each other. You talk and you battle and you discover what’s best. I have to say, neither what the director brings to the editing room nor what I bring to the editing room usually triumphs—it’s a combination of the two. 

Jonathan is such a pleasure to work with because he knows how to manipulate material. He’s committed to the use of music and he has a strong sense of both images and sound. For me it’s like going to graduate school every time I do a picture with him.

MM: With The Truth About Charlie, what were you most proud of?

CL: Just how it all came together because everybody was given a certain amount of freedom. Jonathan is an extremely generous guy. There’s always a lot of exchanging of ideas. With this film we used the freedom Jonathan gave us to explore our own craft. And that sense of freedom was contagious. We recognized it in each other, and allowed each other to do that. That’s what I’m proudest of.