A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : HUH? : In the Dubious Distinction Mode

Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s “Chameleon Street” won the Grand Prize at the 1990 United States Film Festival, but lately the film has another distinction: “It’s the first film produced in this country to be sold for remake rights before it was even distributed,” Harris said recently.

Harris wrote, directed and starred in “Chameleon Street,” the real-life story of William Douglas Street, a black man with only a high school education who became notorious after successfully passing as a surgeon, a Time magazine reporter, a foreign exchange student and an attorney.

But after more than two years, the film has played at only about 85 theaters in the U.S. and Canada. Now, if Warner Bros. has its way, a remake of “Chameleon Street” will be in theaters before most moviegoers get a shot at seeing the original.

“I have no problem with anybody making a remake--obviously, since I sold the rights--but what I do have a problem with is a whole industry that is banding together to turn its back on a film that deserves to be seen,” Harris said.

Harris was already in negotiations over remake rights with Warner Bros. when “Chameleon Street” won the Sundance prize in early 1990. He sold it to them for $75,000 just weeks later. “At the time, frankly, we needed the cash for post-production bills and debts,” he says.

Although Harris is billed as associate producer on the remake, he says his input so far has been “minimal.”

“It looks like they’re basically strip-mining my script and using it as a jumping board for what they want to do--a romantic action-comedy, complete with car crashes.”

Warner Bros. would only confirm that the remake was “in development” at Azoff Entertainment.

But Joseph B. Vasquez, whose “Hangin’ With the Homeboys,” received critical attention this year, said he had been approached to direct.

Harris said he has no problem with that: “Joseph’s sensibility is exactly right for the project, but the question is if it’s right for their take on it.”