Petition Miramax about releasing a Director's cut (original version)

I soo agree with u diamonddog8 test audiences destroy movies, so they all come out bland and uninteresting...it's because the studio execs are such cowards, they don't dare go with artistic vision, they only think about maximizing profits.

Disney, releasing a sexually charged movie like this? why don't I see that happening..

"IMdB; where 14 year olds can act like jaded 40 year old critics...'

Um, actually Miramax is owned by Disney. It is one of the studio names under which Disney releases movies which include Touchstone, Buena Vista(the Disney Distrubution arm), and Miramax among others. Each studio has different types of movies that they release. Disney does family type movies usually "G" and "PG" rated, Touchstone does movies aimed at the teen/young adult market rated "PG-13" while Miramax does more mature movies usually rated "R".

Found the below texts here:

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*54 (1998)

Test audiences killed writer/director Mark Christopher's vision of the notorious New York nightclub. His original cut focused on a love triangle involving bartender Shane and married couple Greg and Anita. Shane's travails include sleeping with Anita and kissing Greg onscreen. Early audiences were put off by the gay kiss and also protested the happily-ever-after ending for all three. After extensive reshoots, the entire triangle subplot landed on the cutting room floor. (J)

Source: Entertainment Weekly (September 4, 1998, p. 20) via FROMSCRIPT2SCREEN.COM

*The production history of this fiasco has been documented in the pages of Entertainment Weekly and other such publications, and it is a bit of a sad story. The original cut did not test well with audiences, Miramax requested cuts, the director balked, and...the machine won. The film was drastically redone for the worse, it seems, and whatever edginess or decadence the film may have had was lost. If you saw the theatrical version, you know it was pretty lame and missing precisely the glamour, sin and sex the material requires. Of course, wouldn't we all love to see the original version? I know I would, even if it isn't that great (it can't be worse than what ended up on the screen). Interestingly, Miramax has stated in the trades there is no director's cut slated for video, DVD or otherwise. However, Miramax has announced a movie-only version, which if you've seen the film, you know is pretty lacking. No day & date or VHS sell-through tie in, and no director's cut, but a DVD. Guess we'll have to wait and see if someday this admittedly limited-interest title is seen the way it probably should have been in the first place..

Source: DVDFILE.COM 10/11/99

Alternate versions of 54 (1998)

A 40 second scene at 1:46 on the DVD showing Ryan having sex in a car was not seen on the PPV telecast nor in theatres but was on the DVD. A promotional clip showing Shane and Julie discussing her status as his girlfriend was edited out of the film after the line where she says "You're Sweet". Another promotional clip had Bell & Jame's "Linging it Up (Friday Night) playing when Shane was trying to get into 54. In the film no song was playing at the time.

Source: IMDB.COM 12/12/99

54's Bisexuality-

Neve Campbell has a bad omen for sex scenes (mostly gay though) in films. In 'Wild Things' the only gay sex scene landed on the cutting room floor. Now, 54 has had to be abridged. One bedroom scene involving Campbell, Phillippe and another man was considered too risky after the first previews were shown. I don't know where these sneak previews were shown, probably somewhere in New Jersey, I just read the reviews, and they often complain that this has robbed the film of its one real thrill, the sex of 54. The film had a very bi-sexual feel to me, until it dawned on me that only traces of this had been left. At the end of the day, the club seems to be more like a village fete that's run out of control.

What's left is Mike Myers in arguably the most important role as the club's organizer. He is supposed to have been ready to promote male workers for sexual favours. Well, that's a bit off, innit? But Christopher, who is himself gay, shot this scene in a light not often seen in Hollywood. On one occasion, having obviously taken too much in the way of drugs, Rubell actually apologises after one rejection on the part of a worker, saying he respects him for having said "no".

In another scene, Shane rushes into the office and starts unbuckling his belt before Rubell realises that the young man is after a pay rise. Rubell, who has certainly been waiting for this opportunity for a long time, kindly refuses this offer. This is not an attempt to excuse sexual abuse at work, but it has to do with dispelling the image of a horny gay boss. Regrettably, this approach to political correctness does have the disadvantage that not even in these scenes anything exciting happens.

It is also interesting how 54 fights against restrictive labels of sexuality. When Brecklin Meyer as Greg refuses his boss' wish to give him a blow job because he isn't gay, Rubell counters that he isn't either, but he just wanted to give him a blow job. The scenes which were cut would probably have contributed to the queering up of some other sexual labels as well.

Source: QVIEW Dec. 10th 1998

Disco Dance

Miramax ordered "54" director to lighten up his first cut after disastrous test screenings

by Josh Wolk

The "54" that enters theaters today is a disco saga that dances to a different beat than did its original incarnation. As Rebecca Ascher-Walsh reports in this week's EW, first-time feature director Mark Christopher was forced by Miramax to alter the movie drastically after a disastrous test screening.

The film studies the hipper-than-thou New York nightclub of the '70s, Studio 54, as seen through the eyes of an impressionable New Jersey teenager (Ryan Phillippe) who works there as a bartender. The original cut, however, was significantly darker, with Phillippe disrupting the lives of a couple who befriend him (Salma Hayek and Breckin Meyer) and spiraling into drugs á la "Boogie Nights." But sneak-preview audiences thought the characters were too unlikable and sinful --and particularly hated a moment when Phillippe and Meyer kiss.

Miramax quickly ordered a none-too-pleased Christopher to do major reshoots (the film was to open in two months). In the end, the kiss vanished, and the characters lightened up dramatically, with Hayek's and Breckin's roles shrinking, while Mike Myers (who plays club co-owner Steve Rubell) and Neve Campbell (as a soap star club habitué) gained screen time. (As a whole, the movie was trimmed by a half hour.) Many of the cast members were surprised by the extensive changes, but not Myers, who says he was surprised that the movie is "as unchanged as it is. I've written four screenplays, and they're never what you think they'll be. You always have to scramble and change. A screenplay is a blueprint, it's not the house. The movie is the house."

Source: Entertainment Weekly August 28 1998

THE 411 ON '54'

Thanks to a tumultuous postproduction period, the film that was made is not the one you'll see.

by Rebecca Ascher-Walsh

WARNING This article discusses several elements of the plot of the movie '54'

Disco sweeps the nation--see it on the History Channel!" proclaimed a billboard beside a Toronto highway last November. On a nearby soundstage, on the set of 54, first-time feature director Mark Christopher was doing his part to bring that history back to life, detailing, in all its sordid glory, the heyday of New York's infamous nightclub Studio 54. "We're not making fun of the time," coproducer Richard Gladstein (Jackie Brown) yelled above the disco din, as sequined extras, balanced precariously on platform shoes, made their way onto the dance floor. "We're being faithful to it and having fun with it."

But the fun was about to end. Christopher, a 37-year-old novice who'd won the chance to direct his 54 script on the basis of two gay-themed short films he'd directed, knew he had re-created the club to within an inch of its Mylar-coated, mirror-plastered self. He knew, from five years of research and writing, that the activities being played out on the stage--having sex with anything that moved, snorting anything that didn't--were accurate. What Christopher didn't know was that he was making two different movies: the one he filmed, and the one that--thanks to dismal initial test screenings, a battle with Miramax, extensive reshoots, and a blizzard of edits--is being released.

The before and after films share a setting, a time period, and a cast. Mike Myers, in his first dramatic role, is club co-owner Steve Rubell; Ryan Phillippe (I Know What You Did Last Summer) is Shane, a naive New Jersey kid seduced by 54's sex-and-drugs siren call; Breckin Meyer (Clueless' hapless stoner) plays Greg, a club busboy; Salma Hayek is Greg's wife, Anita, a coat-check girl who longs to be a disco queen; and Neve Campbell is a club-going, jaded soap opera actress.

But where Phillippe, Meyer, and Hayek were once the center of the story, the star is no longer a person but the club itself. And much of the action taking place within that space bears little relation to what was originally shot.

Miramax purchased the 54 script in 1997 and, after overseeing minimal rewrites, sent the director and his cast off to Toronto for the two-month shoot last fall. There, Christopher filmed a story about an out-of-control love triangle set against the backdrop of an out-of-control nightclub. After the opening scenes, in which Shane is plucked off the street and escorted into a bartending job at the club, Christopher's original script has him spiral downward, not only indulging in drugs but also undermining Greg and Anita's marriage by kissing him and sleeping with her (among others). All the characters engage in tawdry behavior as they claw their way to the top of the heap of creeps, culminating in Shane's expulsion from the club, mysteriously hand in hand with the couple whose relationship he has all but demolished.

During production, a Miramax executive kept tabs on the set, and cochairman Harvey Weinstein himself flew up from New York to give his blessing. According to the cast and crew, filming was completed without a snag.

Miramax, a studio with one eye on art-house filmmakers and another on mainstream, commercial fare, thought that Christopher might be delivering a big summer hit. As Christopher finished editing the film, Miramax scheduled 54's release for July. Realizing that the cast was a teenager's dream team, the company's publicity department began pitching Phillippe as a cover candidate to youth-oriented magazines, even though the subject of the movie and its overt omni-sexuality made it unlikely to appeal as first-date material.

But when Miramax screened Christopher's two-hour cut for a test audience, the reaction was alarming. A person familiar with the response cards reports that the viewers found the characters irredeemable and the ending, in which Greg, Anita, and Shane find happiness, unacceptable. ("I don't think that's true," says Christopher, when asked to comment on Shane's lack of popularity.) And another person involved in the filmmaking process says the audience loathed the moment when Meyer and Phillippe kiss; the subsequent elimination of that scene has been seized upon as proof that Miramax had problems not with the movie but with the theme of homosexuality. That turnabout would be strange, given Miramax's history of films ranging from The Crying Game and Priest to the upcoming Velvet Goldmine, in which any number of men bed each other with alacrity; in fact, the studio proudly showed a clip of 54 at April's New York Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation awards dinner (at which Miramax was honored). Explains Christopher: "This was a very ambitious story line from the start. Our goal was to keep the audience sympathetic to the characters, [and] any material that was removed from the film was removed because it was too challenging for some members of the audience. However, I'm excited because some of the most groundbreaking material really played and still remains."

But Miramax took seriously the test audience's opinion of what didn't play, and fighting began between the studio and Christopher. While the director was vocal to friends and colleagues about the trouble at the time, complaining that Miramax was attempting to take his movie away from him, he has since retreated into the more politic stance of a first-time director who has bitten the hand that could possibly feed him again. "I'm not not commenting," Christopher says now, crafting the kind of hedge it takes most industry insiders years to perfect. "The process is...whatever. Can we keep this general? We were both trying to make the best movie possible, and I think we've done that."

The actors were less confident when they received calls in June summoning them back for reshoots. All were in the middle of other projects; none knew what the result of their additional work would be. Says Meyer: "I figured maybe they didn't get an angle or an insert shot."

But by the time Christopher reconvened the cast in New York for reshoots, only two months before the movie was due in theaters, it was clear more than an insert shot was missing. "It's the first time I went through something like this, and it was scary at the beginning," says Hayek. "I was confused. I didn't know whether it would work or not."

The entire love triangle between Anita, Greg, and Shane was to be left on the cutting-room floor. With the core of the movie missing, the actors had to substitute scenes, and fast. Meyer found that his part had been whittled from "the moral fiber" into a best-friend role; apparently to make Shane appear more heroic by contrast, Greg was now a thief, and Meyer had to film a scene in which he is shown stealing money from Rubell to finance his drug-dealing business. Phillippe extended Shane's voice-over to frame the movie and filmed new scenes with Campbell in an attempt to make their relationship--once incidental--more of a backbone to the movie. As for the notorious kissing scene, Meyer and Phillippe were asked to replace it with a conversation in which Meyer's character tells Phillippe that he's getting out of control. "It's more paternal," Meyer says. "It's on a different level."

No longer do the film's misbehaving characters appear to get away scot-free: The new ending has Shane cutting ties with Anita and Greg and returning to the scene of the crime, only to witness Rubell's pathetic, one-night comeback after having served 13 months in prison for tax evasion. (Rubell died in 1989.)

While Hayek and Meyer say their parts are diminished, it's not surprising that Myers and Campbell--the film's two biggest names--found themselves with more screen time (the film itself has shrunk to a trim 89 minutes). Myers, at 35 the oldest and most experienced of the principal actors, claims to be surprised the movie is "as unchanged as it is. I've written four screenplays, and they're never what you think they'll be. You always have to scramble and change. A screenplay is a blueprint, it's not the house. The movie is the house."

But some of the house's inhabitants aren't altogether sure they're pleased to live there. "It's pretty frustrating to go into something with the best intentions and interests, and have to let it go at a certain point because I'm not the one investing the money," says Phillippe, a staunch believer that the movie should stay true to the tempestuous time in which it takes place. Still, he adds, "my hopes remain the same. I want it to tell a story that will be entertaining and bring back a feeling of an era and a place."

"A lot of my scenes got cut, but *beep* happens," says Hayek. "I think the movie is better, and I'd rather have a small part in a good movie than a starring role in a bad one."

Source: Entertainment Weekly September 4 1998

54 - AUGUST PREVIEW OF UPCOMING FILMS IN PRODUCTION

STARRING Mike Myers Ryan Phillippe Salma Hayek Neve Campbell Breckin Meyer Sela Ward Sherry Stringfield

DIRECTED BY Mark Christopher

Sex between men, women, and anyone indeterminate who wanted to join in, reflected in glitter balls, choreographed to a disco beat, and enlivened with cocaine--just another '70s night at New York's notorious Studio 54. Twenty years later, Miramax is hoping such revelry will lure audiences to the velvet rope of 54, a fictionalized account of the center of the disco universe. Think Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights with spangles, sequins, and Seconal.

Myers, in his first dramatic role, plays the late Steve Rubell, the club's real-life coked-up co-owner, who turns innocent Phillippe (I Know What You Did Last Summer) into a debauched stud. Meyer and Hayek are a husband-and-wife busboy and coat-check girl who watch the comings and goings of New York's glitterati--including a Bianca Jaggerish socialite (Ward) and a sullen soap star (Campbell).

First-time feature director Christopher persuaded Miramax to finance the project on the basis of two gay-themed shorts he'd directed that won festival-circuit acclaim. When the studio asked for a more mainstream script, he toned some things down, including a love affair between two young men. Still, plenty of eye-catching details remain: Meyer and Phillippe are clothed in tiny shorts or unbuttoned jeans, sans shirts. "I wanted to die every day in wardrobe," says Meyer, who shares his first on-screen kiss with longtime friend Phillippe. "As soon as a take was over, Ryan and I ran for our robes."

Miramax approved the script but is said to fear that 54 is still not mainstream enough. Says producer Richard Gladstein, "Miramax ordered a pretty edgy film; we gave them a pretty edgy film; they're going to release a pretty edgy film." (Aug. 7)

THE LOWDOWN The ShoWest promo reel--too edgy for theaters--declared 54 "the sexiest movie of the year," but some of that may get cut to avoid an NC-17.

Source: Entertainment Weekly August 1998