If the Director’s Cut version of a movie is what the director really wanted, who’s calling the shots for the commercial release?
I thought the director owned the artistic vision for the film. Who is really in charge of what the final product looks like?
In hollywood, the “studio” usually has the ultimate power in what goes on release, unless the director’s contract says otherwise. See final cut privilege.
You just made a room full of cigar-chomping studio bosses laugh so hard they pissed their pants.
The people who paid for it: the studio and/or production company. If you are a very big deal like Spielburg or Clint Eastwood, then you can get final cut written into your contract. But no studio would trust a novice director with that privilege on a big budget feature.
The alternative is to get enough money to finance your own projects.
Nope.
I mean, they are the one who makes the artistic decisions along the way. If they do a good job and the studios think it will make money, their film gets released.
The studio, however, can fire directors and can re-edit movies. If the director can make a case that their film has disappeared, he can try to take his name off it. However, even this is difficult.
Watch Babylon A.D. if you want to see a movie that was only “directed” by its original director.
Only wealthy guys like Lucas, Spielberg, or Peter Jackson get to direct and release the films they want.
A classic, and very public, example of the studio stepping in is on Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. After poor test audience results, the studio head wanted it recut to have a happy ending. Gilliam took out a full-page ad in Variety and ended up doing unauthorized showings to private audiences, and after it won a LA critics’ award, a version with Gilliam’s original ending was released. However, the TV broadcast version was the “happy ending” version. He later did director’s cut versions to restore other changes that he had made in his attempts to placate the studio.
Gilliam is infamous for being very outspoken about his work, so I suspect a lot of directors (especially new ones) would be a lot more skittish about things like picking a public fight with the head of the studio that controls the fate of their film. Gilliam was fortunate that he had his history with Monty Python, as well as some other films under his belt, to establish him both financially and reputation-wise. And he was very fortunate that Brazil won that critics’ award, too.
Or guys who feel they have been burned badly and won’t sign a contract that doesn’t include final cut, like P. T. Anderson.
Anderson’ first feature film was taken away from him by the studio and even had the frakking title changed. He only refers to it by his title, and amusingly because IMDb seems to have a policy of listing films by their original titles, they follow suit.
If you look in the right places, you can even find a place on the internet where you can print out a replacement DVD cover with Anderson’s title on it. 
To give a simple example, the studio wanted (among other things) for Mel Brooks to remove the farting around the campfire scene and all use of the word nigger from Blazing Saddles. Mel told the studio he would do it, but since Brooks had final cut he made no changes.
Criterion released the two versions together in a box set along with a third disc about the controversy.
/points at post #5
[hijack/] I’ve seem quite a few “director’s cut” movies on DVD that get released sometime after the theatrical version, and I gotta say in most cases I prefer the theatrical cut. Most often the director’s cut restores deleted scenes that are supposed to be important in some way to the continuity or the rationale for why plots played out as they did. And mostly, IMO they really aren’t all that necessary.
I’d put Blade Runner in this category. I wouldn’t say Scott’s version is a worse film, but I don’t see it as an improvement either.
OTOH, I think Apocalyse Now Redux is a considerable improvement over the original, which I already thought was one of the finest war movies ever.
Ummm…yes? I quoted your post in mine so I thought it was sort of obvious I was aware of it and commenting on it.
:smack: Some days I shouldn’t get out of bed, if I can’t recognize my own writing without a quote attribution on it. Sorry, thought you’d quoted something from elsewhere and posted without reading the thread. (Can I blame work stress instead of my own innate airheadedness?)
Even big name directors with final cut privilege are still subject to contractual provisions regarding the film rating. This happened with Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick had no choice but to edit the orgy scene to avoid an NC-17 rating because his contract required him to deliver an R rated product to the studio. I imagine similar provisions apply to overseas distributors dealing with their local censors.
Kingdom of Heaven, the Ridley Scott Crusader film is much better in the longer director’s cut. But it is quite a bit longer. Studios want a film to dome in at about 2 hours so there can be several showings a night.
I’m of the opinion that the “Director’s Cut” is usually (not always) worse.
Directors have an emotional attachment to their work. So they are loathe to cut scenes that maybe aren’t as strong.
The studio editors, of course, have no such emotional attachment. Anything that doesn’t work they cut. USUALLY to the betterment of the film.
A recent example - I saw all three of the LOTR films in the theatre. Multiple times (I’m a huge nerd.) I also purchased DVDs of said films, and rewatched them all recently, “director’s cut” versions.
I’ve also read the LOTR trilogy about six times.
Watching the “director’s cut” - with every scene that I identified that was in the cut but not in the theatrical release, even when it was a scene in the novels - I always thought to myself, “eh. This scene is a bit weaker than the others. I can see why it was edited out for the proper release”
A shorter movie with only strong scenes is nearly always better than a longer movie with both strong and middling scenes.
Peter Jackson is rather explicit that the theatrical version is the “director’s cut”. The longer ones are called the “extended edition”.
In the “not always” category is Once Upon a Time in America. The studio hacked it to pieces because it was too long. From a financial point of view this is understandable. It is hard to sell a 4 hour movie. But the cuts they made destroyed the movie and made it unwatchable. The original version is one of my favorites.
I have to say I completely disagree. For instance The Two Towers theatrical the movie is about the battle of Helm’s Deep and is little more then an action flick. In the extended version it’s a movie where the battle takes place in and is far more about the characters. It’s a superior work in just about every way for me.
Of course I almost always enjoy director’s cuts more then theatrical. Often the pacing makes more sense to me and plot holes are filled in. Discontinuity often throws me out of movies. Of course I can think of a few movies where the director’s cut is weaker. Aliens with the added colony scenes ruins the ominous approach later in the movie (though I think I’ve heard people say the director agrees with me somewhat on that). Donnie Darko director’s cut is actually a worse film. Identity the director’s cut is 99.9% the same film so why bother?
No problem. I was just confused. I was thinking maybe your computer was set in some way that you weren’t seeing the quoted section.
I hate to butt in while everyone is being so courteous (:)), but I’m curious, why did you fail to attribute the quote? I see this often on SDMB and have never understood why you would bother to quote without the attribution when just hitting the “Quote” button on the post is the easiest and best way.