Is There Such A Thing As A Final Cut? 475
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."
Next into the editing room (Score:3, Funny)
Now that Geoge Takei [imdb.com] has come out [mercurynews.com], there will probably be some revision of Star Trek films [imdb.com] for some Red States, where it's still illegal to be a homosexual starship commander.
"Make it the commander Ronald Reagan."
Re:Next into the editing room (Score:2)
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=8&i
The article also mentions the time he spent in a U.S. internment camp.
Re:Next into the editing room (Score:4, Insightful)
The author is but one voice (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
We didn't start the fire (Score:4, Insightful)
The Boomers inherited their "spiritual void" from the genocidal war that killed 70 million people a decade before they were born, and the 'Great War' twenty years before that slaughtered an entire generation of European males for nothing.
Plus the boomers inherited an insane structure of military leaders on both sides of the Berlin Wall that were ready, willing, and able to burn the world and kill everyone over a minor disagreement of political doctrine.
What is considered the 'spiritual void' of the Boomers is actually a reasonable and humanistic retreat from the religious cult of omnicide (the destruction of all human life on earth) that infused the leaders of the world when the boomers came to maturity.
As for the sexuality of those who create the myths and plays of our culture, it is their concern. We admire the characters that they create, and respect the skills of the writers and actors that created them. If the actors wish to exclaim that an aspect of their personality, such as their sexuality, was an important aspect of their development of the character that they created, then fine.
Re:Colorizing testimony (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Colorizing testimony (Score:3, Informative)
They edited him out as his ghost, but the removal of the mask wasn't changed.
Wha? (Score:5, Funny)
I recognize all of these words individually, but strung together like this they make absolutely no sense.
(oh, and Han shot first...in bed.)
Mox
Re:Wha? (Score:2)
There's an old saying... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to say the same thing about software.
An application is Beta until it's retired.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
And where should we stop? Should we reprint and remove or rewrite politically uncorrect sequences and dialog from Anne Frank, Huck Finn, and Uncle Tom's cabin? I think not. Such revisionism hides whatever insights we might gain into the attitudes and social mores and culture of the time.
And in the case of, say, SW (ANH), replacing scenes and effects MAY make the movie look better, but it's not as we remembered it, and we lose all appreciation of the techniques and the cinematic "state of the art" available at the time. I still cringe every time I see the new, improved Death Star "ring" explosion.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the original is still available, sure.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
People need to suck it up. If they're fragile psyche's can't handle it the way it is, then they should just avoid it entirely, rather than corrupt the author's original intent.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:3, Funny)
Not anymore, we've revised it. Please throw away your old history books.
We've renamed Commodus too, too many jokes. His new name is Urinalus.
URBAN LEGEND ALERT! (Score:3, Informative)
There are deleted scenes from OZ, but all the released versions of the movie, including on television, since its release are said to be identical.
Comes from both sides (Score:2, Interesting)
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:Comes from both sides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:3, Informative)
Are you sure that's what they're referring to? I think the summary is actually referring to the changes made after the first screenings of the Wizard of Oz in the theaters. Based on those screenings, the director chopped a LOT of footage, including a SECOND reprisal of "Ding-Dong the Witch is Dead" after the second witch melts.
Looking at Amazon and the like, I can find no evidence that the first reprisal has been removed on
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Political correctness is the new McCarthyism. The prosecution of thought-crime under the banner of 'diversity'. No art is sacred.
Which is fine, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You bet, that is Lucas' prerogative. You know what really grinds my gears, though? The fact that after Lucas does his new cut, the old ones are never to see the light of day. Outside of bootlegs, we will never see Greedo shoot first on DVD, or E.T. chased by gun toting F.B.I. agents. They will be stuck on a crappy medium (VHS) until those tapes stop working. Who even knows if the original 35mm prints are still saved.
This leads to the lapses in history. I couldn't believe when I watched a show about how ground breaking the special effects in Star Wars were back in 1977 and all the clips were from the re-release! They even played the clip with the Death Star exploding with the new enegery ring! Ughhhh.... That wasn't 1977, that was a couple of years ago.
Plus, it is only going to get worse. As the lack of creativity increases in Hollywood, you'll see more re-releases and remakes where the original is left in a dusty back-lot room someplace.
Re:Which is fine, but.... (Score:3, Informative)
He released the original version of E.T. on DVD in a package with the update.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
(As with so many things) most of this controversy could be resolved merely by enforcing proper labeling. E.g. ET - The 2005 Revision ...which is, after all, just a matter of full disclosure. The goods being delivered have changed, thus their name should too.
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
Bah, forget the process, some people just think that Lucus is a tool.
I would tend to distinguish art from software, I don't want to see art subject to unnecessary revisions, software is generally much more utilitarian t
Re:There's an old saying... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, in some ways it's not about perfect, it's about what actually happened.
... odd. It's been around for, what, 60 years?
And, things like removing a musical number from the Wizard of Oz is just plain
The problem with making new cuts of lo
Yes, there is a final cut (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yes, there is a final cut (Score:2)
Yes, there is! (Score:2, Funny)
I mean, there almost always is (Score:2, Funny)
Well, MOST of the time (Score:2, Funny)
a tad unrelated, but in a similar vein.. (Score:3, Insightful)
To me, the final cut for music should be when they put it out on CD.. , with alterations allowed when I pay to see the performer live...
Not some 45 second edit of the song, playing the backdrop for a LandRover commercial.
Re:a tad unrelated, but in a similar vein.. (Score:2)
I must have missed something (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I must have missed something (Score:2, Funny)
Hillary Clinton got offended.
Re:I must have missed something (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I must have missed something (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I must have missed something (Score:5, Funny)
When the MPAA and studio initially refused to comply, the ADLPotMA representative turned the MPAA lawyer into a newt - a change many felt was for the better.
Re:I must have missed something (Score:4, Informative)
http://imdb.com/title/tt0032138/alternateversions [imdb.com]
Not to mention, "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead" is #82 on the AFI's list of Top 100 Songs.
What they do say is:
"Original preview versions of "The Wizard of Oz" ran several minutes longer than the current version; These are the scenes that were cut or shortened to reduce the running time. These scenes were never included in any officially released version of the film:
A scene where the four main characters return to the Emerald City with the witch of the west's broomstick (including a reprise of "Ding Dong, The Witch is dead!") was cut. Only the song survived; the footage no longer exists (except a shot or two that can be found in the theatrical trailer)."
And according to wikipedia:
"Originally, the crew returned to the Emerald City to a "hero's welcome", with everyone singing "The Wicked Witch is Dead". This too was cut after early previews. Footage of this scene no longer exists, except for a few frames seen in a later re-issue trailer."
Re:I must have missed something (Score:5, Informative)
This [dvdtalk.com] is the best that I could find. I can't vouch for its veracity but I've never heard of bits being cut out of the Wizard of Oz.
The bits that are left in the Wizard of Oz are bad enough! Am I the only one who thinks it is one of the most cynical films ever made? Examples include the 'good' witch saying "Only bad witches are ugly." When presenting the heart to the tin man, the Wizard says something like "The measure of our hearts isn't how much we love others, but how much others love us." I can't remember exactly what the formula is that the scarecrow recites when he gets his diploma, but I think it was the square of the hypoteneuse is equal to the sum of the other two sides. And that just isn't right.
And that's just the obvious stuff. If you start looking at what really happens in the film... this poor woman finds someone drops a HOUSE on her sister crushing her, and then this same person goes on to steal her sisters most prized possession and rightful inheritance. That film is seriously nasty but put enough sugar on it and people think that it's all nicey nicey.
Re:I must have missed something (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I must have missed something (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I must have missed something (Score:5, Informative)
L Frank Baum's universe is quite ethically and morally complicated; a fact that is made full use of in the recent novel Wicked [amazon.com]. (Not one of my favorites, but that's neither here nor there.) In taking a story from Baum's long-running series out of context and transforming it into a screenplay, a great deal gets lost. It seems to me that Baum wanted us, at least as adults, to think about the kinds of things that concern you.
That said, the Wicked Witch of the West is clearly not a nice person, nor a mentally stable one. She spends a lot of time trying to kill a child for the high crime of happening to be inside the house that fell on her sister. The rightful ownership of the ruby slippers is an interesting question, but I think we can safely guess that the Witch would not have used the magic power of the slippers to send Dorothy home and restore all Oz to peace, joy, and prosperity. The Witch died, after all, as an inadvertent result of setting Dorothy's highly flammable friend on fire. I'm OK with that.
Re:I must have missed something (Score:4, Insightful)
It does it pretty well, too. That's what makes it a classic, it says something about people in general, not just the specific people involved in the story and the targeted readership. The movie is the same, to a lesser extent.
Shakespeare... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Shakespeare... (Score:2, Informative)
Not to mention that some works are collaborations and "borrowings" from other authors, which may have been reworked later, etc.
Legend is smoking crack (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Pink Floyd (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pink Floyd (Score:5, Funny)
In Related News... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Related News... (Score:2)
That could be interesting (Score:2)
1984 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:1984 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:1984 (Score:2)
What do you mean by that? We've always been at war with Eurasia. I may have to report you to MiniPax.
Soon no actors will be needed (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Blazing Saddles (Score:2)
Sad really.
Re:Blazing Saddles (Score:2)
These are movies (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
If there isn't... (Score:2)
Uncompletely? (Score:3, Insightful)
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Score:2)
This revisionist film-making has to stop.
Sam
The Final Cut (Score:2)
Obligatory Simpson's Quote (Score:5, Funny)
History is 5 nines irrelevant (Score:4, Funny)
Do we ever learn that politicians are liars?
Do we ever learn that war is worthwhile?
Do we ever learn to marry the right person at the right time?
Do we ever learn to stop making video games about blockbuster movies?
To me, change is good. As a society, my fellow citizens are more and more unable to adapt. Look at steel tariffs and help desk outsourcing.
Our best 0.001% of anything never need changes. The rest is dust in the wind. Take an imperfect story, product or relationship and keep redoing it unitil it is perfect for the parties involved. Future generations should do the same.
That's why I hate copyright, patents and government licensing.
Re:History is 5 nines irrelevant (Score:2, Interesting)
Re-writing your first book is the stupidest idea ever. Just write a new one.
Re:History is 5 nines irrelevant (Score:5, Funny)
Let's review this post:
The title and hook use a trendy geek term "five nines" to make a sweeping and unsubstantiated generalization.
The post is arranged as a series of bullets, rather than actual ideas. This way placid mods aren't compelled to think about what's being written.
The bullets moan about the condition of society, which 99.999% of people agree with, and suggest that "change is good," which 99.999% of people also agree with. It sounds like a stump speech, but most
And he wraps it up by saying he hates IP, which 99.999% of
None of it actually makes any sense but that doesn't matter to a karma whore!
oh sure (Score:4, Funny)
Re:oh sure (Score:2)
Re:oh sure (Score:2)
Connie Willis (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
At the risk of a rantfest: IP's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Picture the broadcast flag, coupled with on-demand movies. Toss in changes of the medium du jour crippled with mostly effective DRM, and you're losing history left and right. There's a new release of, say, E.T. on Blu-Ray. Everyone (not literally everyone, of course, but you get the idea) replaces their old, worn-out VHS (or Beta, in the case of my parents) tapes. Now there's very little evidence that there were ever guns in the movie.
Or pay-per-view/on demand becomes the common way of watching movies. The broadcast flag prevents keeping a copy, of course. So all you'll ever be able to see is the latest version of the movie. Hell, look at Dumbo: can you even buy a copy of the movie that still has the crows singing? They certainly don't show it on television.
Or how about Aladdin? I can't be the only person who remembers the opening song's lyric containing a line about cutting off your hand for stealing a loaf of bread. But good luck proving that it ever even existed - to the best of my knowledge, that didn't even make into the first release of the movie to stores, much less subsequent ones.
The more consumers lose control of the media they consume - not being able to make/keep copies, being forced into a subscription model of media delivery - the more this is going to happen. We've got the technical capacity right now to preserve a closer-to-perfect record of our culture than has ever existed in human history, and we're wasting it. It's being lost to political correctness, revisionist history, and George Lucas.
Re:At the risk of a rantfest: IP's the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the line was "Where the cut off your hand if they don't like your face" changed to "where the land is immense and the heat is intense".
Re:At the risk of a rantfest: IP's the problem (Score:5, Funny)
I knew it had been there, and I even knew I was misremembering it.
Too bad
Something very similar (Score:2)
The Origin of Species (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of these changes improved the book, but some did not. So, which edition is "definitive"?
Lucas lost it (Score:2, Insightful)
Final Cuts Are A Recent Invention (Score:5, Interesting)
The most drastic ruin the artists intention (Score:2)
Version numbers on everything (Score:2)
Make revisions optional (Score:2)
I feel they should leave it to the viewer as to whether or not they want to see the original version
The Ultimate Revisionist History (Score:2)
Natural evolution of this practice (Score:2)
Changes for DVD and theatrical re-issue are natural extensions of these alternations, made possible by the evolution of both the market for and technology of filmed entertainment.
Lucas Gets to Do Whatever The Heck He Likes (Score:2)
If he chose to show, in a future episode (or a new TV series), that Han Solo and Princess Leia did "have a thing" and produce a child, who grows up to become another Jedi master, he could.
The creator of original fictional characters has the license to do whatever he darn well pleases.
Oh Come On... (Score:2)
Spiritual void? (Score:2)
Well, I can see you're doing a good job of filling that in with stuff like GTA and gangster rap.
Look at the Hobbit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:2)
Re:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:2, Interesting)
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:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:2)
Re:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:2)
This post brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
Re:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:2)
Re:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:2)
Re: Some works are permanent and forever (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:4, Informative)
In the begining (well maybe not that long ago) there were some pretty big arguments over what things went into the bible. For example one of these things were the Apocrypha, which were out then in then out again. (Do I see a directors cut/special edition cut that includes the sections that were dropped?)
Let alone the translation from whatever to Greek to Latin to English
I just found this interesting link The Pre-Reformation History of the Bible From 1,400 BC to 1,400 AD [greatsite.com]
So to say that the Bible is permanent and forever is misleading and ignorrant of the history of that document.
Re:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:2)
Re:Some works are permanent and forever (Score:2)
Re:This post needs a revision (Score:2)
Re:What People Don't Realize... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is one of the big fallacies of IP. I saw the original film, hell most everyone here did. When that happened, it ceased to be his movie and became our memory...The proof of that is the whole "Han Shot First" contraversy. We all knew it had been changed, though it took him a while to admit it. In this, he's not only messing with "his" movie, but our minds as well.
You can't release something to the world, and then work to eradicate it 20 years later because you changed your mind about what