'Rockford Files' remake on the way (2012 EDIT: Now maybe a movie?)

Re: 'Rockford Files' remake on the way (EDIT: guess not)

I believe it was a robbery, but I don't think they got more specific than that.

My wife and I have been watching the series on video -- we're midway through season 3 right now. I think I'll pass on any version involving Vince Vaughn.

 

Re: 'Rockford Files' remake on the way (EDIT: guess not)

Luke Wilson would be better than Vince Vaughn. Vaughn doesn't do world-weary.

 

Re: 'Rockford Files' remake on the way (EDIT: guess not)

Agreed... too cocky-glib instead of defeatist glib...

 

Re: 'Rockford Files' remake on the way (EDIT: guess not)

 

Re: 'Rockford Files' remake on the way (EDIT: guess not)

...and Harry O.

 

Re: 'Rockford Files' remake on the way (EDIT: guess not)

It's good to see Hollywood has no shortage of new ideas...

 

Re: 'Rockford Files' remake on the way (EDIT: guess not)

1. I don't think Rockford will really work as a feature-film concept: Jim Rockford didn't get involved (for the most part) in big, important, nationally-significant cases. He was a private eye who got tangled up in individual investigations. The whole character is pitched toward vignette-style episodic storylines.

The thing that made the original series great was the development of the individual characters, the interplay between them, the individual quirks and foibles. If you watch enough episodes, you get to know the difference between Lts. Chapman and Diehl (Diehl is more of an overt hard-ass, Chapman more of an oily smarmy bureaucrat), you get to know Rocky's trucker pal L.J., so on and so forth. You get to know individual idiosyncracies of Beth, Becker and Angel. That's the kind of stuff you can't pull off in a 90-minute movie.

2) Vaughn COULD be OK as Jim. He is in the right age window to do the Rockford rugged-rumpled middle-aged guy persona. Most of his roles haven't been very Rockford-like, but I could see it working. If they were going to go the feature-film route they should have gone full-in to try to get the Cusack-Jeremy Piven duo as Rockford-Dennis Becker. Cusack as I posted above (a couple years ago) would be good as Jim and Piven has a real good resemblance for Joe Santos as Becker. Their interplay in "Grosse Pointe Blank" is fairly Rockford/Becker-like.

3) Cusack as Nixon is just stupid. He looks nothing like him at all. And what the fuck is with this sudden frenzy to cast Nixon as a toweringly-tall guy? Cusack is 6-3, Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) 6-4. Nixon was 5-10 and continually hunched-over. He LOOKED like a weaselly little guy trying to put something over on you. He didn't look like a ramrod-straight guy towering over the room. In the televised debates, JFK looked like he was a head taller than Nixon, even though he was actually only about three inches taller.

According to the back stories (which occasionally varied slightly) Jim Rockford served five years in a California state prison for armed robbery (from indirect clues in several episodes, about 1966-1971).

Somehow (never really explained) he came into contact with veteran private detective Joe Tuley, who uncovered evidence Rockford did not commit the crime, and Rockford was then given a full pardon, clearing his record. After being released, Rockford took Tuley as a mentor/role model and became a PI himself.