I haven’t watched Freeway in years, but a passing mention of it in another thread reminded me of it.
I saw it at a free screening in Santa Monica before it was released. As is usual, the audience had to evaluate the film. There’s a courtroom scene where Kiefer Sutherland appears in a wheelchair and head brace. Reese Witherspoon starts laughing at him. After the show I heard people commenting on the scene as they filled out their evaluation cards. ‘I can’t belive they had that scene! It’s so wrong to laugh at handicapped people!’ Talk about missing the point! The Sutherland character is evil. :rolleyes:
I rented Freeway when it came out on video. The courtroom scene, which I found to be very entertaining (sicko bastard that I am), had been cut dramatically. Too bad. Sutherland’s character had been getting the contempt he deserved. But I guess too many screening audiences were offended by the scene.
I wonder if there’s ever going to be a director’s cut released? Probably not.
There’s a deleted scene on Agent Cody Banks DVD where the bad guy kicks a duck. It’s actually pretty funny (to me anyway) since the guy is ridiculously evil, and the duck is obviously a stuffed fake. However, according to the director, test audiences were so OUTRAGED at witnessing a kicked duck that it brought them out of the movie, no matter how evil the guy is. So they chose to cut around it. (You can still see the feathers floating to earth if you look close enough.)
That’s basically what test screenings do, they gauge how the audience reacts to each scene and how they relate to the characters. If there’s a scene where the audience laughs when it’s supposed to be serious, or (as in your case) where they dislike something the protagonist does, they’ll make changes accordingly. It’s not a perfect system, and certainly some films have been destroyed by test screenings; but like it or not, it’s something we all gotta live with.
