Fuck Ned Nickerson!

I read something extremely troubling yesterday. Tom Cruise is trying to convince Ben Stiller to star in a remake of the Hardy Boys. I am baffled by this. The beauty of the Hardy Boys series is that Frank and Joe are locked in their youth- 18 and 17, respectively (I think). Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise are way too old to be playing the capricious, youthful sons of Fenton Hardy. I assume, since Tom Cruise has no sense of humor, that he would be playing Frank and Ben Stiller would be playing the wild child, Joe - blond hair, blue-eyed, California-good-looks Joe Hardy. Doesn't that sound like a dead ringer for Ben Stiller?

I grew up on the Nancy Drew Case Files and, a little later, the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys crossover mysteries. The unfulfilled sexual chemistry between Nancy and Frank helped to bring me into womanhood. I have to hope that this is a joke and that someone as old and irrelevant as Tom Cruise isn't really going to cast himself as a teenage detective. Most likely, they will update the brothers to be older. I think this is also a bad idea - two brothers, still living together, Joe with a dead girlfriend, and Frank stringing Callie along - it's a little creepy and incestuous. Plus, the whole idea of the Hardy Boys is that they are young, the can infiltrate high schools and colleges, go where the real cops can't. And, they don't work for any agency, so they can bend the rules a little (they don't need a fucking warrant). Tom and Ben will just look like out of shape rent-a-cops who try to hit on underage chicks. This whole thing is just tragic and sad.

Okay, enough about the Hardy Boys. I will leave you with one of my favorite McSweeney's pieces about The Hardy Boys