IMAGINATION
Ideas for Short Story and Movie Remakes with a Pandemic Twist
For whatever reason, Hollywood goes bonkers over producing remakes of old films. Maybe they imagine that, “We did it before, we can do it again” is a good formula? Fan reactions are often mixed with more flops than not, but the producers keep trying.
Well, I’ve been thinking that in this era of never-ending masks and lockdowns, there are some century-old short stories that might actually be fun to resurrect with a Covid twist. The first is The Bet, Anton Chekhov (1899). It’s on my short list of favorite short stories. A second, also related to isolation, is Joseph Conrad’s The Lagoon.
THE BET
Anton Chekhov was a keen observer of human nature. His stories are like swift sketches that reveal much in a compact, concise package. Here are opening paragraphs of the story, a perfect setup for a rewarding read:
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment. The majority of…
