—what would you keep from the original?

SA: Definitely the sex-on-the-counter scene. In fact, maybe extend that scene, and all the other sexual scenes. The connection is carnal and frantic and flagrant. It should play like that on-screen. Fuck the ratings system. Hard.

EF: The plots—they'd still stand the test of time. I'd keep the settings, too. You can't beat camp cabins and woods and certainly I'd want to revisit the estate on which most of The Philadelphia Story is set.

NP: I liked the heroine's competence. She's smart and handy, and not girly at all. She's someone who can do anything, without frivolity.


—what would you change?

SA: Most of the early scenes are terrific. It's when Glenn Close turns all psycho and witchy that "FA" descends into bathos. If the film takes into account the husband's recklessness, his passive sadism, the distress of his mistress becomes more understandable, and the film far deeper. In typical Hollywood style, they bowed to the patriarchy. They allowed a serious film about female disappointment to degenerate into a histrionic slasher thing.

EF: Some of the music. The tag line from the 1980 Little Darlings ("Two 15-year-old girls from different sides of the tracks compete to see who will be first to lose their virginity while at camp") because, though it gets the point out there, it might not suit the thing once these directors get hold of it.

NP: In the original, the heroine has these big-lug Swedish brothers who come in handy when she's kidnapped by mobsters hired by an opposition politico. There's this great fight scene. I'd like to give her some good-guy cholo brothers who drive around in a low-rider and perform more or less the same function. Maybe they're more urban, though.