In David Lynch's new Inland Empire (8 screens), an actor is told that the movie he's working on is actually a remake. "I wouldn't have done it if it were a remake," is his angry reply. Not long after I saw that movie, I interviewed director Joe Carnahan about his movie Smokin' Aces. He spoke about some of his upcoming projects, including a film called Bunny Lake Is Missing. "A remake," I replied. "Not a remake," he retorted. He explained how his version would be different from Otto Preminger's 1965 film, which somehow made it "not a remake."

It's a touchy subject, apparently, and yet every other movie that comes out these days is a remake of something: a video game, a TV show, another movie. Sometimes we get sequels of remakes, or remakes of sequels or even more complicated configurations. In my less-than-400-screens realm, we have The Painted Veil (275 screens), which was already made back in 1934 with Greta Garbo. We have Casino Royale (187 screens), which is completely different from the version made in 1967. We have Black Christmas (4 screens), an already forgotten remake of a great, underappreciated 1974 horror film.

Then, if we want to split hairs, we've got We Are Marshall (365 screens), a remake of every inspirational sports movie ever made, Eragon (361 screens), a kind of mash-up of Lord of the Rings and other fantasy movies and Flushed Away (242 screens), with the exact same plot as Cars, Over the Hedge and The Ant Bully. Apocalypto (233 screens) borrows its jungle-survival techniques from Rambo. The Good German (46 screens) is a mash-up of Casablanca, The Third Man and Open City. And Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower (36 screens) goes hand-in-hand with his previous films Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Many critics have pointed out that Seraphim Falls (27 screens) borrows its plot from Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales. The list goes on. As proof, you'd be hard-pressed to find reviews of any of these films that don't mention the obvious predecessors.

If everyone is so feisty about doing remakes, why does everybody do them (or "not" do them)? In Robert Altman's The Player (1992), we heard several ludicrous (but probably true) pitches that combined two hit movies into one: "It's The Manchurian Candidate meets Ghost," blurted one chirpy screenwriter. Likewise, Little Miss Sunshine (33 screens) is National Lampoon's Vacation meets The Royal Tenenbaums (or insert your dysfunctional family movie of choice). Little Children (115 screens) is Happiness meets Unfaithful, or whatever. You have to admit, it takes a bit of creativity to come up with such a crossing, to think of two movies that might meet and clash in an interesting way. It takes a good deal less work to think of one movie, or one that hasn't yet been remade, and remake it.

Gus Van Sant once told me how he wound up doing his infamous remake of Psycho (which, incidentally, is actually one of the more interesting of remakes). His Good Will Hunting had scored at the box office and at the Oscars, and the suits at Universal studios were taking a meeting with him, trying to woo him. They got around to reading off a list of properties that were up for remakes, and Van Sant matter-of-factly said that Psycho might be interesting.

The response to that movie, I think, gets to the core of why we hate remakes so much: how dare they do that to a classic! Here's a fact: no one did anything to Hitchcock's movie. You can still rent it or buy it and it's exactly the same as it was before. The two movies have already begun to travel down separate paths; you can discuss one without discussing the other. At the very least, Van Sant injected his version of Psycho with bits and pieces of his own personality and his own ideas. Just the idea of a "shot-for-shot" remake would only be attempted by someone with a bizarre, tormented artistic sensibility.

Indeed, some remakes are worth the trouble. Certainly The Departed gave a charge to an otherwise bland movie year, and I wouldn't swap Cronenberg's The Fly for the inferior original. And how about these classics: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Scarlet Street (1945), A Christmas Carol (1951), The Ten Commandments (1956), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Floating Weeds (1959), A Fistful of Dollars (1964), The Thing (1982) and Scarface (1983)? All remakes.

Certainly real artists are willing to give remakes a shot, try to turn them into something new again, but studios that have grown ever more petrified and protective of their pocketbooks, think only in terms of checklists. On one side, there's a list of movies and on the other side a list of filmmakers: draw a line across and hope for a hit. Thankfully David Lynch is still around to make new movies. A remake of Inland Empire? I'd like to see someone try. No, really... I would.