Dekker Adds Name to Fame

Thomas Dekker hopes to bring his blazing intensity to Fame (which undoubtedly will be adding an exclamation point). 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Thomas Dekker, that little fellow from The Sarah Connor Chronicles, is looking to join the cast of the remake of the musical Fame. Twelve year old hearts everywhere are a-flutter.  

The film of course will again tell of the adventures of a group of students making their way through a performing arts highs school. THR says Dekker would play “a working-class kid with some gnarly acting chops who is competing with thousands of other hopefuls to get into and survive an elite New York public high school for the arts.” Gnarly acting chops? Is he a surfer from Far Rockaway? Don’t worry, kid, there are peforming arts high schools in Queens.

Other characters to be cast include an aspiring filmmaker, a shapely dancer, a slam poet, a salsa musician and a sheltered pianist (just a thought…I think the aspiring filmmaker would be steered towards a media centered high school, where they’d have, you know, film equipment and film courses). The producers have been having open calls in New York and LA.

The remake is being written by Allison Burnett and will be directed by Kevin Tancharoen, a director and choreographer who has worked in TV (MTV’s “DanceLife”), on music videos and on tours for singers including Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson. The original was directed by Alan Parker, who, you should note, was not a choreographer or musical theater director, but a dramatic director who occasionally did musicals. That’s one key thing to remember.

Here’s another:

“Dekker, repped by ICM and Untitled, fits the “Fame” profile: He started acting at age 6 and comes from a musical family. He sang on the soundtracks of several films in the animated “Land Before Time” video series and has an album, “Psyanotic,” on iTunes.”

No, that does not fit the “Fame” profile, and that’s what’s wrong. The “Fame profile” was supposed to be about kids who weren’t professional, who came from middle to lower class homes, who were getting their first chance to learn to be professionals.

There are so many things that worry me about this remake that I don’t know where to start. The main thing that bothers me, as evidenced by the presence of the no doubt very lovely and talented Mr. Tancharoen, is that this is being made as just another excuse to cash in on “High School Musical,” and that this is going to be a very slick, bright Disney-esque musical. The original was more of a drama with musical numbers, and had a fairly dark tone to it. I think it even was rated R.

Another thing that made it really different when it came out was that it was about a generation of kids who were trying to be performers in a post-rock era. These weren’t kids who were training to be Broadway performers by learning the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook or who danced like they were doing Broadway shows–they were more likely to influenced by Jimi Hendrix as Sondheim and who moved like they were at Studio 54, not in a summer stock production of Oklahoma! You could argue that this should be the same thing except with a hip hop influence. That would have been a novel idea…maybe fifteen, twenty years ago. But not now. I don’t know. I just don’t feel like it can have as much of an influence or impact as the original did. I think this is just going to be another shiny, happy kiddy show.