Filmmaker Ross McElwee has completed a documentary titled Remake that emerged from personal tragedy and artistic ambition. Originally, McElwee planned to create a film about adapting his 1986 documentary Sherman’s March into a Hollywood production, with the intention of making a companion documentary about that adaptation process. However, his son Adrian’s deteriorating mental health and subsequent death from a fentanyl overdose at age 27 fundamentally altered the project’s direction.
After taking a year to process his grief, McElwee made the unconventional decision to preserve the original remake project while incorporating the new reality of Adrian’s death. The resulting film juxtaposes the lighter elements of the Hollywood adaptation storyline against the profound anguish of losing his son. McElwee uses archival footage he had accumulated over decades of filming Adrian—from childhood through adulthood—to reflect on their relationship and to grapple with questions about whether his filmmaking practice may have inadvertently contributed to his son’s struggles.
Throughout Remake, McElwee examines the inherent tensions between his dual roles as parent and artist. He revisits Sherman’s March, his celebrated 1986 work that featured memorable documentary subjects, including his former English teacher Charleen Swansea, who has since developed dementia and no longer recalls the film. The documentary also includes footage of Adrian discussing the proposed remake, revealing his enthusiasm for a more mainstream approach to his father’s work.
McElwee reflects on questions of consent, influence, and responsibility in documentary filmmaking. He acknowledges uncertainty about whether his films affected Adrian negatively, particularly wondering if a 2011 documentary called Photographic Memory may have given Adrian a distorted sense of himself. These concerns connect to broader ethical questions about the power dynamics inherent in capturing family members on film and the potential consequences of that documentation.
Filmmaker Victoria Mapplebeck, who created the 2024 documentary Motherboard about her relationship with her son, has expressed resonance with Remake’s exploration of these ethical issues, noting the tension between the filmmaker’s compulsion to document and the subject’s varying levels of investment in being filmed.
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