Some of the worst cinematic experiences, aside from sitting in front of a row of teenagers who talk about Gossip Girl episodes during the entire movie, are when books are made into epic fail movies. I’m going to burn in hell for this statement, but I dare you to defy me:

I can’t stand the movie To Kill A Mockingbird.

There, I said it. But deep down in the part of your soul that you don’t talk about, you know I’m right. Gregory Peck—you know, the guy who won the freakin’ Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch—acted like someone so old he was practically one tapioca pudding cup away from going in the home. The kids’ Hollwood-ized Southern accents were so thick the viewers needed subtitles. We’re not even going to talk about how overacted the courtroom scene was.

Even worse, crucial scenes in the book were left out. I know, I know. If they had included every great scene in the book, the movie would have lasted longer than it took the Titanic to actually sink (although in THAT movie, it didn’t sink fast enough to save us from more scenes with Jack and Rose).

The real problem for me, though, was that they just didn’t put enough effort into it. It was the sixties. It was all nostalgia-like in black and white to make it super dramatic and to make everybody look really, really poor. It was about racial tension in the South. OF COURSE IT WAS GOING TO WIN THE OSCAR! It was going to win the Oscar BEFORE THEY EVER MADE IT! It could have starred Soupy Sales in the role of Boo Radley and it was going to win! Ergo, it’s like they knew they didn’t even have to try.

So it’s high-time someone made a new version. We had to put up with a new Superman, why can’t we have a new Mockingbird? And I will stab someone in the eye socket if Spielberg or James Cameron or that fat guy who made Bowling for Columbine and protests everything gets to produce it. I think Penny Marshall would do an awesome job. One of those adorable Fanning sisters should be Scout (surely their parents have had another kid by now to capitalize on their brand marketing…see if the new one is busy).

I am Prozac-level gripped-in-fear that somebody would think George Clooney or Matthew McConaughy should play Atticus and then we’d be stuck with two hours of the older gentleman-lawyer walking around shirtless, probably even in the part where he’s reading the paper in front of the jail to protect Tom Robinson from the lynch mob. That would be the scene where Bruce Willis would fly in—probably also shirtless—and blow everyone to pieces with his flame thrower bazooka. Then they’d have the robots from Transformers (led by a now-lucid and verbal Boo Radley) stomp through the streets, scattering the racist farmers like so many cockroaches and destroying the courthouse to prevent the ultimate injustice from ever taking place.

Nevermind. I’ll just watch the original.