Lesbian Remakes This Broken, Sorrowing World Needs Immediately

by Mallory Ortberg · December 28, 2015

gay2

Death Becomes Her
Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as resentful exes playing an increasingly dangerous game of lesbian one-upmanship. One-updykeship. I don’t know, puns aren’t my strong suit. All of Bruce Willis’ scenes are replaced with that shot of Isabella Rossellini wearing a necklace for a shirt and purring “You’re scared.”

Rapunzel
Bernadette Peters and Madeline Kahn star as rival porcelain-throated, black-hearted stepmother-queens bent on kidnapping the same babies. After a series of bungled attempts at poisoning each other (“An apple? I invented the poison apple routine”), they stop trying to make Rapunzel let down her hair…and start letting down their own.

Some Like It Hot
Sugar doesn’t need another male saxophonist. She really doesn’t need an oil executive. What she needs is Josephine. What Sugar and Josephine need is to become a pair of molls-in-love, the Bonnie and Bonnie of the 1920s, roaming the resorts and casinos of the Florida coast and fleecing elderly millionaires.

The Miracle Worker
“But Mallory, Annie Sullivan wasn’t a lesbian!” Oh, now who’s being naive?

The Third Man (the third man is lesbianism)
“Don’t be so gloomy. After all, it’s not that awful. Like the fellow says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, lesbians, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

B*A*P*S
Don’t tell me you wouldn’t see this, even if they did have to re-name it B*L*A*P*S.

The Boys In The Band
Only it’s bois now, obviously, and instead of tearing each other apart with savage observations about one another’s personal failings, they’re just having a really good time playing drum solos and giving each other haircuts.

Bend It Like Beckham
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers dies immediately after signing Jess to the Hounslow Harriers. He explodes, or his head falls off, or something. See also: Showtimes The Tudors. After Henry’s untimely death, the ladies of the court pass the time before Edward is old enough to take the throne by marrying each other.

Bringing Up Baby
Both roles now played by Katharine Hepburn. No other changes.

Clueless
“Oh my god – I love Dionne! I’m majorly, totally, butt-crazy in love with Dionne!” (Also, somehow, this remake prevents Stacey Dash from taking that hard right turn in real life.)

Grease
We’ve been over this before, but you will never convince me for even a moment that Rizzo ever knowingly engaged in heterosexual activity. This movie is stuffed to the gills with leather girls and spinster principals with plucky, adoring Gal Fridays and wide-eyed femmes wobbling in heels. Danny Zuko is the King of the Lesbians, and don’t you forget it.

The First Wives’ Club
By strange coincidence, every living American First Lady leaves her former-president husband and comes out on the very same day. They start a club. It’s for Lesbian First Ladies.

Johnny Appleseed
I don’t even think there was a movie? I just have a strong feeling that Johnny Appleseed should have been a lesbian. I don’t even have anything to back this up. Just…Johnny Appleseed should have been a lesbian, probably.

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion
IT’S SO CLOSE ALREADY.

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.


121 Comments

  2. keristars +113

    Bend It Like Bekham isn’t already a lesbian romance movie????

    I mean, I’ve never seen it, but I know all about it from the Internet. or so I thought

    1. OiSunshine +34

      As the Femslash Friday post about it here says, there’s a guy to make a love triangle between our heroines, but he’s just taking up space and they head off into the sunset together.

      1. keristars +11

        I forgot that was a Femmeslash Friday post! I remembered it as being an ode to a wonderful canon, somehow.

  3. thewhelk +44

    Having just watched Arsenic and Old Lace it dawned on me that Isabella Rossilini and Peter Lorre have the same accent.

    1. testingwithfire +14

      (imagines Isabella Rossellini whistling “in the hall of the mountain king” during “Blue Velvet”)

  4. kisswithafist +60

    I wanted to add some of my own suggestions, but I tend to think most movies would benefit from a lesbian retelling.

    1. keristars +39

      Shoot, they don’t even necessarily need to be *retellings*: just do a recast and buff out any awkward dialogue.

      But that’s true in general for most movies benefiting from a woman lead instead of a male. (Think of Rambo or Indiana Jones or anything, really.) (Oh man I just thought of Casablanca with Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall in Bogey’s role. Wow.)

      1. keristars +30

        Ohhhh Casablanca with Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo in Bogey’s role, also. Any of the three of them would do perfectly, in subtly different ways.

        1. Unreadaethel +34

          I just imagined Greta Garbo tipping my head back and whispering “here’s looking at you, kid,” and I got all dizzy for a second.

          3. dameacademyalumna +6

            Bogart did it in all the movies he was ever in, which just means more Greta Garbo doing that.

          4. dameacademyalumna +9

            I was reading these comments and thinking Dietrich would be a much better fit but I read your comment and now I’m dizzy, too.

            (I accidentally deleted my other comment.)

          5. Unreadaethel +7

            Dietrich would be the more take-charge, traditional hero type (“you need to be kissed, often, and by someone who knows how,” but less problematic because of gender parity), while Garbo would be a bit more playful, while still being smokey and seductive. The handsome resistance leader would never stand a chance.

          6. dameacademyalumna +5

            I agree, but do you mean they’d be in these remakes at the same time?

            That sounds like a recipe for disaster (think riots in the street) because it’s not possible to choose between take-charge Dietrich and playful-smokey-seductive Garbo. Ilsa’s dilemma and the way it ends, for example, is only understandable when it’s Rick vs. Laszlo because it’s just difficult to choose.

          7. Unreadaethel +5

            Oh, I meant that Laszlo wouldn’t stand a chance against either of them. If they were both in the remake, all three of them would team up to take down the Vichy government, and all villains would fall before them.

          9. Unreadaethel +5

            I really want to watch this movie, but I think it might kill me if I did. If I lived, I’d be unable to watch any other movie for the rest of my life.

      2. Notdarkyet_ +21

        Katherine Hepburn would be a swell Indiana. Also I would have a lot more sympathy for the dopey lovestruck students.

  5. keristars +57

    Also, the sheer number of old Hays Code-era movies I watch and am like “okay, this was a pretty good movie, but do you know what would make it better? if both romantic leads were women”. Most recently, it was Remember the Night (1940) – a Barbara Stanwyck holiday thing. Barbara Stanwyck would be an excellent lesbian in just about every film I’ve seen her in, come to think of it.

    Wait. Does this mean I have a previously unrealized crush on Barbara Stanwyck????

    1. testingwithfire +26

      I would find it surprising if anyone who saw the young Babs in action didn’t immediately fall in love with her.

      1. keristars +12

        You’re very right. I’ve been hit-or-miss on how much I love her, but I think it’s just because I’m 85% ace/aro and simply don’t know how to recognize these things. 😀

        (Joan Blondell, too, perhaps?)

        1. testingwithfire +15

          Please excuse an old lady who still has a lot to learn: not everyone’s as horny and starstruck as I’ve always been. The ever-diverse Toast commentariat rules.

          And precode Joan Blondell? My stars. 🙂

          1. keristars +9

            Haha, I was fully adult and out of college when I even learned about asexuality, and it was like a shift “so THAT’s why everyone else is so weird”. It’s been ten years but I’m still coming across things that make me think “wait, my experience/assumptions aren’t universal?”

            Precode Joan and Una Merkel (and Ginger in her best friend/comedy roles) were my first old movie crushes 😀 Those brash, no-nonsense characters they play are wonderful. And so casually sexy, too. Well, maybe not casually, but it’s not a lingering forced soft-focus camera the way Norma Shearer or Kay Francis got. I have a type, for sure.

          2. maryoftheassumptions +9

            Being pretty much demisexual made it extra hard to notice I was also bisexual. It makes the already blurry line between “I want to be her” and “I want to bang her” pretty much invisible.

    2. alula_auburn +6

      I have been playing “Hollywood Visionary” from Choice of Games all week in large part to accomplish this. (Also to make dark sci-fi musicals.)

      1. keristars +10

        !
        Well now I guess I know how I’m going to be spending my off-time at work tomorrow.

        I have also been vaguely keeping a mental list of old movies that I would like f/f novelizations of, if I ever one day turn into a writer. It’s actually easier to list the ones that I think are so excellent that lesbian romance wouldn’t add to them (or is already there). I mean, for one – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is so gay already that it would be a shame to lose out on those campy Jane Russell numbers. Maybe Lorelei? but I adore her arguments for why she wants to marry Gus, it’s got a thrill of misandry that would be unfortunately lost to turn him into a woman.

        1. maryoftheassumptions +8

          Oh, sure, she marries him. Money’s gotta come from somewhere. And then she and Jane continue their fully-funded life of touring, singing, and rampant lesbianing.

    3. Irene +11

      You need to see Stanwyck’s pre-code Night Nurse, in which at every possible opportunity she and Joan Blondell are taking off their clothes together. Unfortunately there aren’t that many opportunities, but they do end up in the same bed once. Full description at http://sovay.livejournal.com/688013.html

      1. keristars +5

        I have seen it twice this year!

        I spend every evening curled up with WatchTCM on my laptop, and my NowPlaying guides are dog-eared and highlighted for the good stuff not to miss >.>

        I think Night Nurse is one of the few films that wouldn’t benefit from Mallory’s treatment in the OP simply because it’s already got so much f/f subtext that if you made it text, you’d lose the fun.

  6. sueyres +65

    The Hudsucker Aviator
    Just 2 hours of Jennifer Jason Leigh and Cate Blanchett flirting with each other in Transatlantic accents.

    1. lilah80 +32

      That’s a swell idea, dollface, just swell. If they happen to run into Hildy Johnson from His Girl Friday, so much the better.

  7. flying_ghoti +113

    Jurassic Park is a bit obvious. Just do the exact same movie, but from the raptors’ perspective: a poignant story of love, loss, and delicious Australians.

  11. Cathy Pegau +26

    Oooh, Love it. How about LadyHawke (gotta love gals with swords), Mr(s). And Mrs. Smith, Sense and Sensibility.

    1. KelseyHigham +19

      According to an advice column I read years ago (Miss Manners, maybe?), the formal appellation is the delightful Mesdames Smith.

      (A male couple would be Messieurs.)

  12. lemonack +119

    I just really need a lesbian Grease remake where Kristen Stewart plays Danielle Zuko. That’s all I want out of the world.

        1. Guest +11

          Years ago The Alice B Theater in Seattle performed Grease.

          Apparently, in order to license the script, you have to pledge not to alter the words in any way.

          The Alice B complied … then proceeded to cast actors from other genders than the movie had done.

          Not technically L/L, but highly entertaining and transgressive to boot.

  13. sienak +36

    I don’t know if I buy Cher with Dionne (Dionne was pretty into her boyfriend as far as I could tell) but Josh was definitely a temporary stop on the way to someone female. I know in my heart she got there eventually.

    Also, this list could be so much longer. I would read much more of this list.

    2. OliviaPJones +17

      Agreed! I mean, how convenient was it that she could say she was saving her virginity? And then the first guy she goes for is gay? Hmmmmm.

  14. SalmnChaseUtley +33

    Bend It Like Beckham was the very first thing I thought about after reading this title.

    (but can Archie Panjabi still play the sister if they remake it? please?)

  16. SarahChiang +31

    There was the “Connie Appleseed” bit from The Simpsons. That one needs a follow-up, clearly!

  17. halloweenjack64 +74

    TV show division:

    Jessica Jones: Jess and Trish. That’s all you need.

    Game of Thrones: Look, the Tyrells’ whole thing is gardening, which means that they must know about all the plants with psychoactive properties. So they drug the dudes and have their Hands sign decrees that end all of Westeros’ wars, and Margaery and Sansa retire to their secret garden.

    Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Kira and Jadzia. Maybe they go out in spaceships once in a while and blow shit up, I dunno. There’s a slightly sinister female Cardassian tailor on the station who will occasionally call them in for extended “fitting sessions”.

    2. bookwormV +16

      I have just started watching Jessica Jones, and I initially assumed Trish was Jessica’s ex (and that they’d broken up due to Jessica not wanting to put Trish in danger, but still loved each other very much). My boyfriend, on the other hand, assumed they were sisters.

    2. aiquale +6

      I hold this movie fully responsible for entrenching in me the vastly misconceived notion that if I do a thing awesomely enough, the cute boy I like will notice and then fall in love with me because of it.

  19. actualmeg +79

    I just want to see all the Thin Man movies re-done, but with a loving, quippy, cocktail-drinking married lesbian detective couple. (Their dog is now also a lesbian.)

    1. OiSunshine +23

      The dog also forms a relationship with another lady dog. Pretty much a background detail but for the parallel.

  20. Frumiosa +28

    Empire Records: Deb and Gina. Stop fighting and just make out already.

    Between Deb and Lucas I was a very sexually-confused 14-year-old. I just knew one thing: AJ and Corey could fuck right off.

  21. Bzns Woman Special +20

    Mallory, I think we live on different coasts, and you’re very famous now, but I think we should be in love. Will you go as Romy and Michelle with me on Halloween?

  24. mike_b +20

    Chasing Amy but both of the leads are women and Joey Lauren Adams is straight. I feel like this would improve any of Kevin Smith’s early movies honestly. I don’t know why.

  25. OiSunshine +62

    There was a critic who said that Titanic would have been greatly improved by replacing Leonardo di Caprio with Gina Gershon.

  26. MsNormaDesmond +31

    A+++ would watch any of these.

    Also, can we swap out Cary & Jimmy for Kate & Kate in Philadelphia Story? Just Kate Hepburn playing all three roles? I’ll put you in my pocket, Tracy.

  27. testingwithfire +17

    I’m writing up a post on The Third Man for Metafilter’s FanFare … and the character of Anna definitely could have used some Sapphic cheer after Harry Lime.

    Apparently David O. Selznick fought to glam Anna up because he wanted Alida Valli to be the next Ingrid Bergman, but Carol Reed won out and dressed Anna in regular street clothes. Selznick had a point, though: with all the illicit dough Harry was making, what did Anna see from it? Cheap bastard.

    Interestingly, the documentary “Shadowing the Third Man” mentions in passing that it was WOMEN who rebuilt Vienna after WWII… and there is film footage to prove it. The young guys had all been killed or were in POW camps. Of course they go on to say that many of these women married or hooked up with American or British servicemen. But THE TOAST knows that many of them didn’t marry at all. 🙂

  29. georgiewilliamsblog +28

    Love this. Grease just doesn’t work for me unless Rizzo and Sandy end up together – right after Rizzo sings “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” of course. I’ve just never understood the ending as written. It’s GOTTA be Rizzo and Sandy.

  30. shellygrrl +37

    A League of Their Own. (Bisexual Femme) Mae and (Asexual Homoromantic) Doris were clearly in a long-term open relationship. (For Mae, she needs the sexual gratification — hence the open relationship — but she loves Doris and is otherwise fulfilled in that.) And surely there were other sapphic ladies among the Rockford Peaches (and other teams).

  31. LacaunaKale +20

    Now, Voyager. Just imagine that cigarette scene with with say, Ingrid Bergman, opposite Bette Davis.

  32. damanoid +44

    INT. TAVERN – NIGHT

    CRAZY OLD MAURICE bursts through the front door, ranting incomprehensibly about how Johnny Appleseed was really a time-traveling Kristen Stewart.

    –scene from Beauty and the Catwoman Space Captain from Treasure Planet

  34. kayloulee +47

    *BANGS FISTS ON TABLE*

    WHIP IT! WHIP IT!

    THE BOY WAS ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY AND SO WAS THE SCENE IN THE SWIMMING POOL

    MAKING OUT UNDERWATER IS NOT A GOOD CHOICE AND NEITHER WAS PUTTING THAT INDISTINGUISHABLE BOY IN WHIP IT

  35. PettyVengeanceFetish +23

    If you tell me that Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her did not end up in a relationship of bitter dependency and petty one up dykemanship that did not include poisoning and flame throwers then you and I did not watch the same movie. Also where, where, WHERE can I get a necklace shirt?

    1. shy +8

      Yeah, I thought the ending of them ‘painting each other’s asses…for eternity!’ pretty much made it canon.

  36. Delphinium +14

    The 2003 Re-make of The Italian Job. At a minimum, just replace Mark Wahlberg and you’re there. I mean, really. Chalize Theron’s women-only lock cracking-business, utter indifference to all men and also style in that film, the way Wahlberg politely swoons over her beautiful hands…yeah. We’re really close here. …. Mind you… a completely gender-flipped cast would be a dream too. Jason Statham can stay, he’s cool, I’m afraid all the other guys will have to go. All of them.

    1. kisswithafist +9

      Oh my god yes please! The idea of the Italian Job team being comprised entirely of vehicle and grand larceny savvy women save big grump Jason Statham as our gun-ho token fella sidekick had me won, but now I’m thinking replace Wahlberg with someone like Hilary Swank and it would be my new favourite movie. Please deliver this pitch immediately to someone that can get it done with this exact cast.

  37. Susan Chapek +9

    Any version, screen or stage, of The Shop Around the Corner (In the Good Old Summertime; You’ve Got Mail; She Loves Me).

  38. corianne +53

    The Breakfast Club.

    During the makeover scene, Ally Sheedy kisses Molly Ringwald, hard. Molly Ringwald realizes that her angst over being a virgin is because she’s never been attracted to boys. Rather than Ally Sheedy coming back looking like every other 80’s girl, Molly Ringwald emerges with a short haircut and flannel shirt. Ally Sheedy and Molly Ringwald are the only couple to hook up.

  41. smiavs +2

    I would totally watch your version of The First Wives’ Club because it sounds much more entertaining than the original, but I’m pretty sure that in the movie, they were just the first wives of guys who remarried, not former presidents’ wives….

    1. shellygrrl +3

      The guys cheated on the wives with younger women. I don’t think they married said younger women (I think one of them got engaged, though?).

      The original is pretty good. Quite misandrist, in fact. And there is a scene where at least two of the wives are at a lesbian bar for reasons I don’t remember, so there’s something?

      Anyhoo. Headcanon where Diane Keaton’s character’s lesbian daughter (stereotypically man-hating type) eventually plays matchmaker and fixes her up with a gorgeous, successful career woman. Y/Y?

  42. shellygrrl +15

    My Fair Lady/Pygmalion — Eliza chooses Freddy. Only Freddy is a dandy butch gal mistaken for a young man.

  43. Babs +6

    Sound of Music cries out for drag kinging. How much better and frankly more plausible the Baron would be as a butch. I think the telegram messenger who sings I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen is already a boi.

  44. misteline +6

    Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I remember watching it. I remember liking it. I remember almost nothing about it except that I was unable to convince my brain the movie wasn’t about lesbians, despite all evidence to the contrary.

    Some Like It Hot. Good movie, Great movie. Better with lesbians.

    And definitely Big Trouble in Little China. Think about it… 😉

  45. Dean +3

    Late to the party here, but: Heathers. At the very least, I need the epilogue where Veronica and Martha kiss while watching movies on prom night.

  46. Lee +3

    Replace Kaye and Crosby in “White Christmas.” Can you imagine that duo hooking up with the Haynes sisters? (I could see Vera-Ellen dancing to that tune…)

  51. layrl +3

    Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion – a threesome with two ladies and Alan Cumming is LESBIAN BY DEFAULT. (I say this as an adoring fan of Alan Cumming.)

  52. darthhellokitty

    Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion – a threesome with two ladies and Alan Cumming is LESBIAN BY DEFAULT. (I say this as an adoring fan of Alan Cumming.)

  53. sevanetta +2

    Rizzo has always been my favourite character (because she is both like and unlike me) and your suggestion can only add to her awesomeness!

  54. cowshark

    I fell in hate with his character when Jess was talking about racism and he pipes up with the "but I'm Irish" shite. Yeah, I know that anti-Irish prejudice is still alive in the UK but seriously, his experience is like hers, puh-leeze. Hate.

  55. LibraryLasz +1

    I’ve been saying for years that a lesbian version of Clueless would be flawless.

    But I would probably just make Josh a girl (Joss?) and make Tai openly bi.

  56. E.J.

    (Gay)Pride & Prejudice. This is accomplished in these ways:
    1. Fem!Darcy(OMG nervous, accidentally a jerk Darcy scares Lizzy away, but Darcy thinks it’s because Lizzy doesn’t like girls, and ugh I love this already)
    2. Lydia ends up with Georgiana Darcy, not *simultaneous gag choke wheeze* George Dickwad
    3. Mary’s probably gay too.
    Man I love this already, and I’ve spent like five minutes on it.