Is There Such A Thing As A Final Cut?

heidi writes "There's an insightful article over at CNN's entertainment section about the tinkering of recent cultural history. Apparently, there is no such thing as a final draft any more, and author Todd Leopold does a great job of showing how this is revisionist history at its, well, oddest. Aside from the many examples he cites, such as the 'new' Capote novel and the changing of Star Wars to show that Greedo shot first, i can think of the 'new' Camus novel that i read a few years ago and the way that The Wizard of Oz had the 'ding dong the witch is dead' song edited out. In an era where our entertainment has come to define us and to fill, however (un)completely, the spiritual void that we inherited from the Boomers, messing with our stories isn't necessarily a positive thing, creative genius aside."

There's an old saying...

[Kelson]

"Movies are never finished, only abandoned."

It's just not possible to get a movie -- or any artistic work, whether we're talking serious art or pop culture -- to the state where it's absolutely, 100% perfect. There's always some fine tuning, some tweaking, and at some point you have to say "That's it, we're done." It's not completely bug-free, but you've fixed all the big problems and you've gotta ship it sometime.

But with re-releases, DVDs, special screenings, etc. (and sufficient funding), people have the opportunity to go back and do a director's cut, or release two versions of a film (one short enough for theaters, one for people who can hit "pause" and take a bathroom break in the middle), or go back and fix that embarrasment of a first novel that you wrote when you were young and didn't understand the craft of writing as well as you do now.

Is this good or bad? I think it's neither. It's a tool. It can be used well, or used poorly. Sure, Lucas can go back and revise history so Greedo shoots first, but he can also go back and clean up the lousy compositing in the Rancor pit, fix the transparency in the Hoth battle sequences, etc.

Shakespeare...

[jaylee7877]

Legend holds that Shakespeare *never* rewrote any of his plays or poems. He didn't even bother to cross out anything as he wrote. But then, we're not all Shakespeare's are we? Still I think there's something to be said for leaving well enough alone. When we change what we believe is a flaw, it also changes much of the original genius and beauty of a work.

Soon no actors will be needed

[dptalia]

This reminds me of Connie Willis's book Remake [amazon.com] . In it acting is a dead profession. People merely edit films to create new releases. The main character has a job removing all references to smoking from Casablanca (I think it was Casablanca, maybe it was a different movie). Due to having cut out other unwanted material (such as violence, racism, drinking, etc) the movie was down to under 30 minutes in length.

Unfortunately with political correctness becoming the norm, I don't see things like this not happening. Anti smoking advocates already scream if a movie shows a "good guy" smoking. How hard would it be to start protesting old movies that contain positive images of smoking?

These are movies

[w.p.richardson]

I would be much more concerned about the manipulation of the news footage we use to obtain information about what's going on in the world. Those who control that medium, control public opinion and can pacify the masses, whilst marginalizing dissent.

As for movies, these are art - as the artist sees fit, they can muck about with their creations. Ownership though, can be a little fuzzy, if for example the rights are owned by a company and not an individual.

Re:Some works are permanent and forever

[AtomicRobotMonster]

This is a joke right?

The bible has been "translated" and revised throughout history. Not sure about holy works from other religions but I would imagine it is similar.

Re:Shakespeare...

[Anonymous Coward]

Legend holds that Shakespeare *never* rewrote any of his plays or poems.

That's because he never wrote them in the first place [theage.com.au].

Connie Willis

[Tony]

Connie Willis wrote about this years ago, in a novella called "Remake." In it, an angst-ridden young man working for some hollywood company digitally edits old movies based on the mores and whims of the whatever passes for political correctness. For instance, throughout most of the story, he's editing scenes in old movies, taking out all references to alchohol. He digitally changes drinks into... other things.

It predates the Steven Spielberg South Park episode by several years, but otherwise is almost identical. Guns replaced with walkie-talkies. That's just funny.

Just take a look at Wired

[doombob]

Just take a look at a few of this last years issues of Wired Magazine. A couple of the covers talk about the "remix culture." And articles on the inside are all about Creative Commons, Remixing ideas, Freeing IP (not addresses). Right now it seems culture is in an "unstable state." It like we want to try new things, but just can't seem to let go of the cultural items of the past. So we rework those things that are "safe" and "comfortable." Just give it a couple years for the influence of Baby Boomers to fade from entertainment, media, etc. and then we should have another influx of new ideas.

Re:History is 5 nines irrelevant

[DesireCampbell]

The soulution is not to re-image the past to look like we knew what to do all along - it's to strive ahead and create new peices that show we've learned.

Re-writing your first book is the stupidest idea ever. Just write a new one.

Re: Some works are permanent and forever

[virtcert]

...And of course: perfect and immutable and perfectly translated into all languages regardless of time and culture.

Of course.

That would help explain why we can go to Bible.com search for 24 different English versions, and 91 International versions with links to 140 different language editions. Be sure to read #7 [paganwisdom.com] and #8 [paganwisdom.com] here [paganwisdom.com]:

Why My Religion is Right and Yours is Wrong [paganwisdom.com]
- or -
The Flawed Logic of "The One True Path" [paganwisdom.com]

[Full Disclosure: I wrote the linked article]

- Brian

Final Cuts Are A Recent Invention

[OttoSink]

Back in the day (about 200 years ago) a composer like Beethoven revised his symphonies between performances. The idea of having a "final cut" probably grew out of the use of mass production to make copies. Given the Internet, we will probably see far fewer "final cuts" in the future.

The author is but one voice

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course Han shot first. This whole "Greedo shot first" is nothing more than the opinion of George Lucas.

So what if he wrote the story? After he tells the story to me, it exists in my brain. The version in my brain is under my control. It ends however I want it to end.

Any well-told work transcends its author. To limit your interpretations of it to those in the mind of the author is to accept an outright blasphemous form of mental slavery.

A free mind has many voices, both inner and outer, and the author of a work of art is just one more outer voice.

Do not surrender your power.

Re:Some works are permanent and forever

[Daetrin]

Let's see if i can remember a few things from the history class on the old testament i took in college. The mistranslation of "Reed Sea" into "Red Sea." There's a decent amount of evidence that Yahweh had a wife at one point but she got edited out later. There was at least one point where stuff was codified and a lot of stories, which were just as "valid" as the ones where were kept, were dropped for political or cultural reasons. It's been about six years since i took the class, but i can tell you for sure that anyone who thinks the bible hasn't ever changed is either a fundamentalist (and therefore willing to completly ignore historical evidence) or delusional.

Comes from both sides

[Sir_Eptishous]

The "editing" of media due to what is called political correctness, is pushed by both ends of the political spectrum. Some don't like the "degradation" of women, some don't like the "degradation" of religion, especially christianity, some don't like smoking, some don't like the portrayal of "racial sterotypes", etc; etc;.

You correct. It is getting out of hand. Personally, I'm sick of people being offended by one thing or another. Get the f^#k over it.

Re:There's an old saying...

[JesseMcDonald]

I agree that the "politically correct" justification is getting way out of hand. However, that shouldn't prevent anyone from publishing an edited version of e.g. "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Any confusion between the original work and the edited version is an issue of either ignorance/sloth on the part of the buyer, or false advertising on the part of the seller, or possibly both. If the former is true, then the buyer is at fault; caveat emptor. If the latter is true, then the seller is committing fraud, and should be vulnerable to a civil suit by the buyer for trying to pass his edited version as the original. In addition, the author of the work would have a case for trademark infringement if the seller was using the title of the original work to represent something other than the original text.

Re:Colorizing testimony

[Stonent1]

Dave Prowse was on a local radio station here a few years back when EP-II had just been released. He had said that he was never told about James Earl Jones until he saw the first screening. The whole time during New Hope he was voicing all the lines in the suit. He kept asking how are they going to deal with the muffling and they said they could fix it in post. So imagine his suprise hearing a new voice during the first screening. I had hoped that the station would have asked him to do HIS vader voice but they didn't.

Re:There's an old saying...

[hurfy]

No kidding

How does one take a SONG out of a MUSICAL?

Maybe Wiccas don't like that song for some reason....
Maybe we shouldn't celebrate death?!? Tho some do.

If we edit out everything that might offend someone somewhere we will all be watching the same 1 allowed movie soon. This would cut down piracy tho if there is only 1 movie to download...a big plus for the industry i am sure.

Seems kinda weird to fracture our culture, such as it is, where diferent people saw diferent versions of same show.

hehe, wish i could make a political movie with a version for red states and a version for blue states and get rave reviews for both, then not mention that your relatives talking about it saw a diferent one than you did ;)

If you want to change something, make a new version and label it as such and don't hide the original.

Look at the Hobbit

[Sir Pallas]

Even Tolkien did this -- though in a much more creative way -- blaming the changes in The Hobbit (first published in 1937) on the fact that Bilbo was lying about how he got the Ring and Gandalf had finally gotten the truth out of the fellow. Why? Because it was meant as a history (albeit fictional) and the history changed.

Legend is smoking crack

[jfengel]

Shakespeare continually rewrote his plays. He adapted them for different actors and different venues, and abridged them in various different ways depending on the tastes of the times. He sometimes had to censor his texts when the rules demanded changes.

I'm not sure what legend's source for "He didn't even bother to cross out anything as he wrote" is, but it's unfounded. No original Shakespeare manuscripts exist in his own hand.

Most of his plays have several different versions, and when you go to perform one you have to pick which one you want to take as your base text. This is made harder by the fact that many of these these folios and quartos are reconstructions by the actors themselves, some of which are mistaken, but others changes represent times when Shakespeare himself edited the text.

Hamlet, for example, is very different between the First Folio and Second Quarto editions. When Kenneth Branagh combined the two to make his movie, he was doing a Hamlet which Shakespeare himself probably never saw. He'd rewritten the play, and Branagh had combined two rewrites. Which one Shakespeare would have preferred is up for debate, but it certainly shows that Shakespeare did revisit his plays.

I suspect legend's source is the fact that Shakespare was one prolific son of a bitch; he was cranking out works of genius almost faster than you could copy the things. He'd put out several plays a year at times. There are internal contradictions in the text that suggest that Shakespeare didn't revise quite as many times as he should have.

And yes, IAASS (I Am A Shakespeare Scholar). I'm directing Merry Wives of Windsor right now, a play which certainly could have used a few more editing passes.

Re:There's an old saying...

[gstoddart]

It's just not possible to get a movie -- or any artistic work, whether we're talking serious art or pop culture -- to the state where it's absolutely, 100% perfect. There's always some fine tuning, some tweaking, and at some point you have to say "That's it, we're done."

Well, in some ways it's not about perfect, it's about what actually happened.

And, things like removing a musical number from the Wizard of Oz is just plain ... odd. It's been around for, what, 60 years?

The problem with making new cuts of long-time classics is that it starts to pretend the original version (which made it famous) never happened. Imagine if someone decided to make a cut of Citizen Kane in which he actually finds what he's looking for at the end of the film?

It used to be that a directors cut would add footage, or show the scene in a particular way he couldn't get the studio to release. For many movies, the directors cut makes for a better movie -- witness Blade Runner.

When you subtly re-write what happened long after the fact, it's not so much about reaching artistic perfection, as it is about self indulgence.

You may want to go back and fix that 'embarassment of a first novel', but if that novel has already become a literary classic, what the hell are you thinking? Imagine if the family of Hemmingway started releasing new versions of his novels -- either by making them up of finding an "addenum to the manuscript" in the attic.

I think it's kinda wierd to re-write entire sections or drop other sections. But, you're right, I guess lucas can do what he wants with it.

Cheers