Post #155736 by Geeky Tiki on Fri, Apr 29, 2005 9:41 AM

Fun topic!

Hey, remember, even the film that is originally released is edited for commercial purposes.

Studios may demand a certain rating or the avoidance of a certain rating, so every artist faces supervision by non-artists with fiscal oversight.

Myself, I'm more sick of seeing "Director's Cut" or "Unrated Version" plastered on DVD's as a selling point. Shouldn't every cut be the "Director's Cut?" That message says that the director didn't get to make the film he or she wanted in the first place.

Pisses me off - now they use the fact that the director apparently thinks the DVD is the true version of his film and wants to let us all know that we wasted our time in the theater. Either that, or, like the bowdlerized versions, it is a ploy to grub more sheckels from the citizenry.

These "clean" store edits are not based on what the store believes, either. They are based on the store being able to make more money than if they didn't offer that edited cut - to me, that's exactly what the studio did in the first place.

Calling the cut of a film that hits the theaters "definitive" and considering any further editing to be sacrilege ignores all the other things that are part of the commercial film indutry.

Think about how many director's kvetch about the studio not releasing their films a certain way because the studio needed to avoid an NC-17 rating.

Or, consider: Isn't it an amazing coincidence that 99% of all film are between 90 and 120 minutes long? Wouldn't you think there'd be more variation in length? Isn't telling a director that a 90 minute or 2 hour film is required to keep customer flow going a serious case of artistic coersion just to keep ticket sales at a certain level?

Think back to the last "Director's Cut" version of a flick you saw with "20 more exciting minutes" or extra boob shots that never made the theater. Which version is the "true version" of the film?

Which version of "What's Up, Tiger Lilly?" or "Blade Runner" is the true version? :wink:

Same goes for music. Is it the album cut or the singles version of a cut that is "true."

Artists release "radio cuts" and "extended dance mixes" all the time to satisfy purely commercial demands. I sure hope they don't start relesasing "Artist's Cuts" of songs.

If the artist releases several takes, or a DJ remixes it, isn't that a crime as well?

Bottom line: Follow the money. If something that is done can be explained in terms of trying maximize profit, odds are that is the real reason behind why it was done.