By Fred Topel | Image property of New Line Cinema.
Danny Glover plays the owner of a videostore whose stock gets erased while he's on a business trip. In Be Kind Rewind, his clerks remake all the tapes their own way. Filmmaker Michel Gondry avoided remaking films starring his films' stars, so there is no Lethal Weapon remake, but that's just fine with Glover.
Danny Glover on Be Kind Rewind
"I think it's been done on several occasions," said Glover. "Whether it's been done on Saturday Night Live or somebody imitating me somewhere, imitating Mel somewhere."
The remake hook was not what sold Glover on the film. "When I read the script, it was so full, it was so rich. On the one hand, on the surface, it's the story about this guy who has this institution within the community which is a video store and that this video store is a kind of repository of memory in some ways. I think he understands that intuitively. He understands intuitively what it is. And that the building itself is also a repository or a library of memory. Whether that memory is a kind of fantasized recreation of his own making or whatever it is, it's the idea of it."
Aside from memories, it was also important to Glover to tell a story of a community trying to hold onto its legacy. "The idea that these people have value, that this community has value beyond its present state, that present state is like many of the small towns that you find along the Eastern seaboard which had been manufacturing centers where working people had good jobs and made good livings and everything else, and have now been de-industrialized over the last four or five decades and now have fallen on difficult times."
Be Kind Rewind
Be Kind Rewind
In his own life, Glover also strives to preserve memories. "I like the idea of memory. Perhaps the reason why I live in the same neighborhood that I've lived in since I was 11 years old, since 1957, is the idea. I live seven blocks from that. I like the idea of being able to walk, open my door and walk out the house and some kid, 'Danny Glover, you remember me? When I was a little fat two year old, now I'm 6'5"' I like that idea. I like the idea of going around, walking around the corner and going to the hardware store that I've been going to for 32 years or a little corner place and sitting down, go driving by the house where I grew up in from the time I lived there, from the time I was 11-years-old until when I moved out when I was almost 19-years-old. That's why I still live in San Francisco."
Be Kind Rewind opens to theaters on February 22nd.
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