North by Northwest: The Art of Survival

 As streamlined legend has it, Alfred Hitchcock commissioned a script from Ernest Lehman that would begin with a murder at the UN and end with the protagonist hanging off the face of Mt Rushmore. (Working title: The Man in Lincoln’s Nose)  From that premise, Lehman crafted the iconic twists and turns that Cary Grant's character, Roger Thornhill endures in North by Northwest.   To give heart to aspiring screen writers everywhere, it took Lehman a year, and it was a year of struggle and writer's block, belying the apparent seamlessness and breeziness of the finished product.  This being a Hitchcock thriller, the plot incorporates mistaken identity and intrigue involving a cool blonde, the coldly competent and worldly enigma Eve Kendall, played by Eva Marie Saint.  All of it arguably just an excuse for one of Bernard Herrmann's greatest scores:

It's still a thrill to watch, but it invites a question:  Could a Roger Thornhill of the twenty-first century undergo what the Roger Thornhill of 1959 endured?   Updating the story to today (versus remaking it) would be an interesting challenge and it’s not immediately apparent that such an adventure would still be possible given advancements (and regressions) of the present time.  (Note: Spoilers may follow).  Some obvious opportunities for re-imagination present themselves immediately.  Smart phones would obviate the mix-up at the hotel bar that sets the plot in motion.  They would also make it unlikely that a truck stolen in the flat heartland would make it all the way back to Chicago without being stopped.  The ubiquity of surveillance cameras in the lobbies and halls of hotels  and for that matter everywhere would complicate things for someone evading police.   The omnipresence of security at train stations, public gatherings and official spaces like the UN would pose special challenges to one trying to sneak onto transportation, disrupt an auction or make a hasty getaway from the scene of a very public murder (let alone commit one).  

These are trifles compared to some of the other changes in American society since Roger Thornhill first appeared on screen that would call for a vastly different approach to the suspense.  What would replace the cold war politics?  What information would be worth transporting in a physical object that couldn't be more efficiently procured cybernetically from the safety of the home country?  Is the UN as relevant to American audiences today as it was then?  For that matter, what foreign power poses as much of a threat to everyday Americans as that of homegrown corporate evil-- and that being the case what could be done with contemporary Roger Thornhill's complicity in it as an adman?  There's a mini theme in the original concerning the assistance that workers -- cabbies, redcaps, maids, bellhops, valets and maitre d's-- provide in evading the authorities and the thugs or making things happen-- often for a price, but always with a subtle finger flipped to the powers that be.  Isn't that still a thing?

I'm not saying it would be impossible to update the story (if one were up to the challenge), but to match-- or realistically merely to emulate-- the knowing punch of the original would take some serious remapping.  What you would wind up with would not be the elegant sophistication of Hitchcock's North by Northwest.  It would be pointless to do unless you were using the inspiration of the original to explore the question of what present day menace would be the counterpart of the cold war threat of the original and what obstacles of the given surveillance state would inspire a contemporary Roger Thornhill to make it through to the face of Mount Rushmore with grace and wit to spare.  Sounds just crazy enough that someone who cares to do it right (without pretending to want to "improve" the original) just might ought to someday give it a try.