‘West Side Story’ And ‘Nightmare Alley’ Remakes Dissected

Deadline proudly launches Two Shot, a video series in which Pete Hammond and Todd McCarthy tackle the artistry of films. Each has reviewed and written about the craft for decades and built a remarkable breadth of knowledge of films past and present. What we hoped for when we asked them to do this was a concise, mature, thoughtful conversation comparable to what we saw when Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were alive.

In their first outing, they dissect the challenges Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro faced in remaking near-perfect classics, the 1961 Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise-directed West Side Story and the 1947 Edmund Goulding-directed Nightmare Alley, respectively.

Hammond has been Deadline’s Awards Columnist for the past decade, covering what is seemingly now the year-round Oscar and Emmy seasons. He is also Deadline’s Chief Film Critic, having previously reviewed films for MovieLine, Boxoffice magazine, Backstage, Hollywood.com and Maxim, as well as Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide for which he was a contributing editor. In addition to writing, Pete is also host of the KCET Cinema Series and the weekly KCET television series “Must See Movies.”

McCarthy is a veteran trade publication film critic, columnist and reporter who has also written several acclaimed books and documentary films. He served two stints on the staffs of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and extensively covered film festivals internationally for both publications. His film Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography won the best documentary prizes from the New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics associations, and he won an Emmy for writing the documentary Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer. He also directed the documentaries Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient and Forever Hollywood.

Check out their conversation in the video above.