Steve Martin has admitted during his Lifetime Achievement Award that the cut is 4 and half hours long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=381aYexNTuc
It might still be existing somewhere in the vaults of the studio, is anyone else wondering what can be in those additional minutes?
I'd definitely be down to check it out just to have a new experience with this timeless classic, but there's really no reason a film like this should be 4 1/2 hours long. I'm sure it would be a one time watch and that's it.
shareI am more interested in seeing the 3 hour cut of First Blood.
shareWow...the great 4 - 5 hour cut myth...
Heads up.. this refers to the total footage shot before they hit the editing room.
Nearly all movies have a first cut of 4 hours plus...then its edited down to the required level.
Most cut footage is cut for good reason.
But these legendary 4 hour cuts sitting in vaults unreleased are largely fantasy.
And I agree...this movie is nigh on perfect...why would you want to have a 4 hour cut?
The script is available online if you look around. I remember reading it a while back and, believe me, what they pared it down to made a world of difference -- for the better. There was a side story with Neal's wife suspecting him of infidelity that added nothing to the journey that he and Del were on. Lots of other stuff too that detracted from the focus on Neal and Del's complicated relationship.
A good part of the movie was filmed near me and a couple years ago I dug through local papers from the time of shooting. There was a scene filmed in a diner that involved a brawl started by Del, which would have been placed near the end of the movie, after the night in the hotel where they reconcile. It's why when Del shows up in the cab of the tractor trailer he's sporting a black eye.
Hmm, that's interesting. Thanks for posting all that.
I'll agree that it sounds like the filmmakers used good judgement and made some good decisions in editing it down. That suspected infidelity sub-plot in particular sounds awful.
Well, it kinda makes Susan’s reaction at the end make more sense - the extreme relief and tears she exhibits seem a little overboard. Not that you particularly notice on first viewing, but knowing she spent the whole time thinking Neil was porking some other woman makes her emotional flux more understandable.
Oh I see so when she says “Hello Mr Griffith” she’s just happy that it turned out that Neal’s companion was indeed a guy and that he wasn’t cheating on her? Yeah that exchange always puzzled me
shareYes, and it’s even more meaningful because she suspected ‘Del Griffith’ was a fictional person invented by her lying husband. She’s relieved to find out he’s flesh and blood and Neil was telling the truth all along.
shareGot it, thanks. For the life of me I never could make any sense out of that exchange. It seems that cutting some of these scenes is the reason for the confusion.
shareJust watched the movie again and decided that subplot really should have stayed. It would up the stakes for Neil - the later he is, the more she suspects him of having an affair.
It also ups the drama so it’s more than just an unstructured montage of one catastrophe after another (which the film is almost in danger of becoming near the end)
Plus, as mentioned, it makes sense of the way she behaves when they finally arrive.
I still don't know why they cut it.
shareI’d love to see the 3.5 hour cut. Details here: https://youtu.be/fEtOEoyqj6k
shareThe snob part of me never wanted to watch this film ... until last night.
So when Neil calls home and explains where he is, I immediately got the message she wonders if he has a liaison going on, but to my mild surprise, they never did pursue it.
Which I'm sort of glad for, as it would have been an easy, familiar trope.
Idk, if they played it lightly it might have made for a funny subtext, but whatever concern she might have had was all off screen.
I think the movie is wonderful as it is but that is a very good point.
shareApparently they cut the 3.5hr version down to 2hrs which Hughes was happy with, and I’m guessing the ‘affair’ subplot was still present at that stage, but the studio made them hack it down to 90mins.
I’m blaming the studio for cutting it.
But yeah, still masterpiece.
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I'd love to see the 4 1/2 hr version!
shareI'm guessing a combination of gags that are *very* similar to the ones that are in there and very, very extended versions of the existing stuff. Like, maybe Martin has a much longer confrontation with the lady where he winds up cussing a blue streak. They would have cut it for pacing and timing. The other stuff is probably re-hashes in some form; likely they felt it was too similar and redundant. Like, maybe they had more "awkward motel stuff" with Del and Neal. They went, "this scene and that scene are the same, more or less," and cut one (or six...four hours?) of them. Think the Greedo and Jabba scenes in the Special Edition of A New Hope. They each convey roughly the same info, but they went with Greedo. It's a better scene with the more action-oriented climax to it, plus it makes more in-world sense (Jabba sent a bounty hunter as opposed to schlepping down himself - not very "top ranked gangster").
That'd be my guess, anyway. Most of the material probably just prolongs it, doing only slightly different riffs on the characters and themes, they then sliced 'em down to the lean version we know and love.
I'd still like to see it all, of course. Not unlike the similarly bloated original cut of Annie Hall that's supposedly out there...
Well if they took out those scene very probably is for a good reason
shareI just watched a video on some of the footage that was shot and deleted and a lot of it sounds pretty good, like the entire time Neal’s wife thinks he’s having an affair, the robber who stole Neal and Del’s money at the Braidhood Inn was actually the Pizza Boy who Del didn’t give a very good tip to, the pizza Del orders is disgusting and Neal can’t eat it, the State Trooper explains that they drove past Chicago, Del tells Neal that he didn’t get insurance on the rental car and Neal then punches him in the eye (which explains the black eye) (I am actually glad they cut this, the two characters already had two big blow ups, we didn’t need a third), after Neal realizes Del’s wife is dead they go to a coffee shop and Del explains that his way of avoiding the pain of his wife’s death is to just travel all the time and during the holidays he feels he needs someone to be wife, just this time he went way overboard (sounds pretty touching actually).
shareThis does sound like it has a lot of possibility, although keeping a comedy brisk is probably a good thing. But it all seems to fit nicely. The robbery scene was so brief I didn't think he'd taken money from both wallets, and how Neal slept through the intrusion is hard to swallow, but there did seem to be more story there than what we were given.
shareYeah the one thing I really wish they left it was the inclusion that the robber was the Pizza Boy from earlier and he was getting revenge for Del giving him a shitty tip. That would have made it even funnier.
EDIT: Actually I think we also need the subplot about Neal’s wife thinking he’s having an affair, without that subplot her reaction to seeing Del comes out of nowhere and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
There’s a one hour extended scene of Del with his other hand between Neal’s two pillows.
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