He Remade a Film That Doesn’t Exist | Paul Bunnell on A Blind Bargain, Lost Cinema and Crispin Glover

What does it mean to remake a film no one can see?

The 1922 silent horror A Blind Bargain, starring Lon Chaney, is one of cinema’s great lost works—destroyed, surviving only in fragments and memory. And yet, over a century later, director Paul Bunnell set out to bring it back.

In this episode of INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, Bunnell discusses the strange challenge of rebuilding a film from absence—reimagining its story in the 1970s, and confronting themes of obsession, sacrifice, and transformation.

With Crispin Glover stepping into one of Chaney’s roles, the film becomes something more than a remake—it’s an act of interpretation, speculation, and cinematic resurrection.

How do you honor something that’s gone? And how far can you push it into something new? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices