Dear god, no … not Midnight!

So Variety is reporting that Michael Arndt, who scripted Little Miss Sunshine, is writing the screenplay on a new vehicle for Reese Witherspoon … a remake of the 1939 romantic comedy Midnight, which starred Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche. Most of you probably haven’t heard of this film unless you’ve been reading my love-letters about it for the past few years. I even compared the film with The Wedding Crashers a couple of years ago (one of my favorite entries). It’s not available on DVD right now. Midnight was written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder and directed by Mitchell Leisen, and although Wilder famously couldn’t stand Leisen, it’s a lovely little frothy confection of a 1930s comedy. Not perfect, but the dialogue is often delightful.
Witherspoon will be taking the Claudette Colbert role (this is almost as bad as writing “Ice Cube plays the Cary Grant role“). No word yet on who will take the roles played by Ameche, John Barrymore, or Mary Astor. On the positive side, does this mean the movie will finally, finally see a DVD release? One can only hope.
I need a cold compress and a drink, and then maybe this weekend I will go watch my sad little VHS copy of Midnight taped off TCM years ago. All that lovely snappy dialogue (“from the moment you looked at me, I had an idea you had an idea”). If anyone decides to remake Ball of Fire or any Preston Sturges movie this week, it’s probably better that you don’t tell me about it. I don’t care about The Women so much, although I don’t see how you can keep it from being terribly dated.
[News item found via Nerve’s ScreenGrab blog. Credit to Martha Fischer, the former queen of “Dear God, No” entries at Cinematical, for the headline inspiration.]