1. For some acute remarks distinguishing remake from sequel, see Thomas M. Leitch, "Twice-Told Tales: The Rhetoric of the Remake," Literature-Film Quarterly 18, no. 3 (1990): 138-49.

2. This is one side of a familiar point of view in the discussion of adaptations, in which the film version can never aspire to the heights of the literary version, unless of course the original work is "bad," i.e., a genre work. See, for example, George Bluestone, Novels into Film (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califor- soft

nia, 1961). The general approach is summed up in a line whose source I wish I knew: "The only good copies are those that make us see the ridiculousness of worthless originals."

3. Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford, 1973) may be useful here for its proposal of a theory of rereading that stresses that "strong" artists need to actively mis read, while "weak" artists are content to be imitative and derivative. But Bloom's judgments, if not his categories, may need adjustment to be applied to film. break