Seven More “Remakes” We’d Love Werner Herzog To Direct

From "Twilight" to "2012," seven movies crying out for a redo from the eccentric German filmmaker.

“Jackass: The Movie” (2002, Jeff Tremaine)

Herzog injects himself into many of his documentaries as the host, storyteller, and narrator. And since Herzog is so incredibly entertaining on camera, his presence in a remake of nearly any documentary instantly makes that film better than the original. You think I’m kidding about this, but I’m deadly serious. Can you imagine how amazing “Nanook of the North” would have been with Herzog on hand to attempt igloo construction? Or how about “Spellbound,” with Herzog asking confused and frightened middle-schoolers about the hours they’ve wasted learning meaningless letter combinations when they could have gotten a real education, walking across North America?

My ideal Herzogian documentary remake would be of “Jackass: The Movie,” where our hero hangs out with Johnny Knoxville and his crew, eggs them on into more and more dangerous stunts, calls anyone who chickens out a coward, and then makes them all look like wusses by doing something truly insane like eating a shoe or hauling an enormous boat over a mountain.

“Bewitched” (2005, Nora Ephron)

Herzog is not a fan of television. He once posited “The Herzog dictum,” which says “Those who read, own the world. Those who watch television, lose it.” And when he’s feeling a bit grumpier he says stuff like “If you switch on television, it’s just ridiculous and it’s destructive. It kills us.” A remake of a movie based on a television show would be the ideal setting for Herzog to work out all of his aggression toward the idiot box. The question though, is what show should he bring to the big screen? My heart tells me to vote for “Hannah Montana,” but my head says “Bewitched,” because that metafilm was about the mounting of a new version of the television series.

Herzog could cast popular television personalities (I like Ryan Seacrest as the new Darrin and Blake Lively as Samantha) and write whatever drivel comes to mind. Then, when critics and audiences complain about the banal characters and asinine dialogue, he could explain how it was all done intentionally as a comment on the banal, asinine quality of television. The extra cherry on top would be Herzog’s genuine exploration into the series’ witchcraft aspect — get ready for Samantha and Darrin to share a lively chant over a Samhain candle!

“Breakin’” (1984, Joel Silberg)

The undebatable apex of weirdness in Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant” comes at the tail end of a gunfight between two groups of drug dealers. Cage’s Lt. McDonagh, caught in the middle, points to one of the victims and tells one of the surviving gangsters, “Shoot him again, his soul’s still dancing.” Herzog pans over and, sure enough, there is a guy dancing — breakdancing! — on the floor. Why breakdancing? Herzog could have used anything to illustrate McDonagh’s cracked perception of reality (earlier, he has the guy seeing imaginary iguanas). Obviously, Herzog is fascinated specifically with breakdancing. And what better place to indulge that fascination than in a remake of the original “Breakin’”?

Herzog’s version would feature a lot more slow-motion, the better to bask in the ethereal elegance of the electric boogaloo craft. Instead of actual breakdancing music, the film (tentatively titled “Breakin’: Der Boogaloo Elektrisch”) would be scored with a variety of classical music, Wagner mostly, so that the audience might better appreciate the moral abyss represented by the dancers’ gyrations.

“Leaving Las Vegas” (1995, Mike Figgis)

As evidenced by their work together in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans,” Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage are kindred spirits. For both, no filmmaking choice is too inexplicable. Breakdancing souls? Why not! Putting on strange accents that appear out of nowhere for a few scenes and then disappear again? Don’t mind if I do! Let’s hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and if Herzog and Cage remade one movie together, it stands to reason they might do it again. And if you’re gonna remake something, why not remake one of Cage’s previous films? A Herzog redo of “Raising Arizona” sounds enticing; so does one of “Wicker Man.” But if the pair were going to remake any Cage movie, their go-big-or-go-broke attitude would almost certainly lead to Cage’s Academy Award-winning performance in Mike Figgis’ “Leaving Las Vegas.”

Herzog could paint a portrait of Sin City in much the way he paints one of New Orleans in “Bad Lieutenant” and Cage could take his previously unrestrained performance to new heights of inspired lunacy. (Herzog has repeatedly referred to his directorial attitude toward Cage as “turning the hog loose.”) In the scene where Cage’s Ben drinks from a bottle of liquor while driving right beside a motorcycle cop, for instance, why not have Cage actually driving? Or why not have Cage play both roles as part of another demented hallucination? Hell, why can’t Cage play every role in the film? If you’re gonna let the hog loose, you might as well let him take over the whole pigpen.

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