Has there ever been a director's cut that made the film shorter?

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Surely there must have been a director who thought: "This is a flabby monster, I'm going to ditch 30 minutes."

― Bela Lugosi's Dad, Friday, 6 August 2004 10:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the DC of Bladerunner is a few minutes shorter the original version.

― robster (robster), Friday, 6 August 2004 10:42 (twenty-two years ago)

The director's cut of Alien is abit shorter, I believe.

Ridley Scott: master of shorter director's cuts.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Friday, 6 August 2004 10:43 (twenty-two years ago)

the version of the shining that kubrick recut for europe and the rest of the world was like twenty minutes shorter

― David Steans, Friday, 6 August 2004 11:49 (twenty-two years ago)

where was the original cut intended for?

― RJG (RJG), Friday, 6 August 2004 11:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Blood Simple by the Coens = cut back by half an hour.

Semi-similarly, the mass-market version of Dark Star by John Carpenter was notably expanded, but Carpenter's own definitive cut reduces rather than extends the footage.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 6 August 2004 11:53 (twenty-two years ago)

i believe the tv version of dune (from which david lynch demanded that his name be removed) was significantly longer than the original version. i think there's another example of this but i can't seem to remember it right now.

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:21 (twenty-two years ago)

yes, lynch didn't want his name involved with the restored version of Dune. I'm not sure why, I guess maybe he didn't over see the insertion of the other material. I don't think he was happy with the released version either.

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:42 (twenty-two years ago)

i wonder if, during the heyday of "films on tv" (the early video era, when vcrs hadn't yet saturated the market so television rights were a major source of studio revenue), there weren't films where extra footage was shot expressly to be shown on a "world tv premiere," just like dvds so often have extra footage today.

i think lynch's objection was largely on principle, since the revising of the film was done without his input (against DGA guidelines, i believe)... not to mention the cropping of the widescreen, which lynch (a painter originally) must have abhored.

back in the 1960s, otto preminger unsuccessfully sued one of the networks (was it CBS?) for showing one of his films edited down and with commercial breaks. (not to mention cropped, though letterboxing didn't exist as a concept back then.) i wonder if anything has changed since then in the way networks are allowed to treat films.

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:47 (twenty-two years ago)

the 'blood simple' story is funny, apparently they didn't intend for it to be shorter. they cut the movie as they saw best from the original footage and it came out that way.

but by a half hour? ned are you sure? i don't think i ever saw the recut, actually

― g--ff (gcannon), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:49 (twenty-two years ago)

robster, you stole what i was going to post

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:49 (twenty-two years ago)

The Director's Cut of "Catwoman" was 90 seconds long.

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:50 (twenty-two years ago)

90 seconds of cleavage.

― St. Nicholas (Nick A.), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:52 (twenty-two years ago)

"director's cut" is such a problematic concept. does the release of the "director's cut" of donnie darko imply that there was studio interference (whatever that means) in the original cut, or is the director simply taking an unlikely opportunity to revise his film?

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:52 (twenty-two years ago)

gone in 15 seconds
around the world in a day and a half

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:53 (twenty-two years ago)

bob & carol & ted

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

" wonder if, during the heyday of "films on tv" (the early video era, when vcrs hadn't yet saturated the market so television rights were a major source of studio revenue), there weren't films where extra footage was shot expressly to be shown on a "world tv premiere," just like dvds so often have extra footage today."

Isn't that what Coppola did with "The Godfather Saga" (aside from putting everything in chronological order)?

― Doobie Keebler (Charles McCain), Friday, 6 August 2004 16:03 (twenty-two years ago)

my mom and her friends still stay home to watch "world tv premieres" of various popular movies. meanwhile, she has a vcr and has not gone to the video store in years.

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Friday, 6 August 2004 16:06 (twenty-two years ago)

'where was the original cut intended for'?

america. as odd as it sounds, he recut it after a week or so of it being on release. i think a simialr thing happened with 2001. perhaps he thought his american audience was less discerning, haha

― David Steans, Saturday, 7 August 2004 13:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Attack of the 5 Foot 4 Woman

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Saturday, 7 August 2004 13:33 (twenty-two years ago)

you'd think lynch would be tickled about the, er, insertion of other material; at least that's what most of his film seem obessed with, foreign substances and their globby insertion. maybe he's one of those perverts who delight in the ultra-bizarre right up to the point when his partner gets a mischievous look in her eye and whips out her own idea and he bolts from the room

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 7 August 2004 13:39 (twenty-two years ago)

tracer i never pegged you as an apologist for losing artistic control.

― g--ff (gcannon), Saturday, 7 August 2004 14:52 (twenty-two years ago)

That sounds more like Cronenberg than Lynch.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Saturday, 7 August 2004 18:21 (twenty-two years ago)

The original premiere version of 2001 was 160 minutes long. After the premiere, Kubrick removed about twenty minutes from it. I can't remember if he was asked to do it initially or he did it unilaterally, but in the end he agreed that the shorter version was better.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Sunday, 8 August 2004 04:47 (twenty-two years ago)

lots of movies are trimmed after their festival premieres. platform and playtime fall in that category too (there are like a million different versions of tati movies, most of them some kind of "director's cut").

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Sunday, 8 August 2004 04:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Picnic at Hanging Rock.

― Al'manach Oseni (Autumn Almanac), Sunday, 8 August 2004 06:46 (twenty-two years ago)

They're about to release the Director's Cut of the Director's Cut of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD, and each of them will be 18 hours long, supplemented by new footage that George Lucas is still working on right at the moment. Lucas also reserves the right to come to your house at any time after you've bought the DVD set, remove it from your shelf, and charge you another $100 for an even NEWER version in which C-3P0 makes a wish and becomes a real boy after all.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Sunday, 8 August 2004 14:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Do Greedo and Han shoot each other in this one and is Han digitally replaced by a hobbit?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 8 August 2004 18:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Blood Simple isn't that much shorter - about five minutes of actual film, and part of that is made up with a new introduction.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Sunday, 8 August 2004 18:42 (twenty-two years ago)

That's odd, wonder why I thought otherwise. I suspect crack.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 8 August 2004 18:44 (twenty-two years ago)

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