Lost Cuts, Part One

One facet of film fandom that I have a huge, irreconcilable crush on is the idea of lost versions of films we know, be they well regarded films that have lost key footage on the cutting room floor, or, in particular, panned films that are only maligned due to studio interference that left their true incarnation lost to either the mists of time or perhaps to a European vault, waiting to be discovered by an enterprising Hollywood film fan. We’ve been lucky enough to bear witness to many ‘lost cuts’ over the years, from the prototypical director’s cut of Blade Runner to the release last month of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut. This enthusiasm does, of course, leave out the horribly cynical DVD ‘special editions’ of films, where a few minutes of pointlessness or crudity “Not Seen in Theatres!” is released and proclaimed as a grand new version. No, this is about grassroots, underdog versions of films that have fought their way into the film fan and then public consciousness, whose potential release the studio must be relentlessly harangued over. It’s about the triumph of art over commerce, and when the intended cut or prized footage is unveiled, film fans rejoice.

THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER

One that has come to my attention recently, and which inspired this article, is Richard Williams’s The Thief and the Cobbler. ‘Never heard of it’, you say, and rightly so. Until its bastardised and incomplete release in 1995 after thirty YEARS of work, the film was only a much-admired legend in the animation industry, and given its disdainfully minor release in cinemas and on video, it has largely remained that way. What appears to be a trivial animation cash-in either entitled The Thief and the Cobbler, The Princess and the Cobbler, or Arabian Knight (depending on where you live), is actually the residue from a labour of love that endeavoured to be the pinnacle of hand-drawn animation, a triumph of artistic process where financial returns were moot. The Thief and the Cobbler could have been the defining achievement in hand-drawn animation, but now it lurks as a mythical could-have-been among animation enthusiasts and a big nothing to everyone else. But there is still a chance that The Thief could emerge as it was once meant to be seen.

I came across the project earlier this year in the signature of an Internet forum posting. A user posting in the Blade Runner thread on the Home Theatre Forum included a banner encouraging fan efforts to restore The Thief and the Cobbler. Intrigued, I clicked the link and found Eddie Bowers' tremendous site devoted to awareness of Richard Williams’s grand project. Despite the secrecy surrounding this film, you have indeed encountered this man’s work: he was animation director for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a job he secured on the basis of the animation he had managed to complete on Thief thus far, footage which so dazzled director Robert Zemeckis and Industrial Light and Magic that Williams was an essential hire.

Even in 1988, Thief was the subject of excitable whispers. In dribs and drabs since the 1960s, Williams had produced animation of such loving detail that it put anything else actually released to theatres to shame. But Williams was not interested in a commercially lucrative end result. This was animation for animation’s sake, an attempt to break every known rule of what the medium could achieve. Although it certainly had a plot (inspired by Arabian folk tales) rather than comprising a melange of sketchy indulgences, the lack of traditional action and, most tellingly, musical numbers, made Thief a dicey project for any studio.

Williams’s success with Roger Rabbit finally secured him the funding he needed to hire a full staff and work on the film full-time, and beginning in 1990 the goal was to release the finished Thief and the Cobbler in 18 months. But when Williams screened a rough cut to the studio, they were shocked by a film they perceived to have no commercial viability. Since Disney’s resurgence in 1989 with The Little Mermaid, songs were considered central to any animated film’s wide appeal. Thief had none, and to boot, its main character maintained a Chaplineseque silence throughout. Panicked, the studio allowed The Completion Bond Company to take over, who fired Williams and moved the production from Britain to Hollywood under the direction of Saturday morning cartoon worker Fred Calvert. Williams still had 15 minutes to complete, and Calvert not only finished these utilising cheap TV-quality animation outsourced from Korea, he jettisoned numerous painstaking Williams sequences for the sake of musical numbers and other more commercially accessible features.

The result, released internationally in 1994 as The Princess and the Cobbler, was a shocking degradation of Williams’ vision. Ironically, it appears to be rip off Disney’s Aladdin from two years previously, but many in the know accuse Aladdin of cribbing from the circulating Thief workprint. Buried within Princess are preserved sequences of stunningly intricate beauty, but the film had been unutterably compromised. The following year, this version was released with yet more changes and much more dialogue than was ever intended as Arabian Knight.

This was the last incarnation ever seen of The Thief and the Cobbler, and since then it has been the source of much pining among those savvy with animation history, especially since the workprint that Williams unspooled for executives before being removed from the film has been circulating among animation insiders ever since. Roy Disney has made numerous efforts to restore the film with Williams’ active involvement, but the goal has been stymied every time by a lack of financial and creative investment.

The film has made news again this year due to a Miramax DVD release, which once again does nothing for Williams’ version, instead releasing Arabian Knight as The Thief and the Cobbler as was done for home video in the mid 90s. But more importantly, one industrious filmmaker fan, Garrett Gilchrist, has created the best possible version from unearthed superior copies of the workprint painstakingly interspersed and superimposed with surviving Williams footage of far better quality from the DVDs of Princess and the Cobbler and Arabian Knight, storyboards, and stills secured from original crew members.

I hope to see this new version very soon, and Gilchrist and other supporters hope that this Recobbled Cut will prove to Disney that a market is out there for the finished version of this landmark film, which industry professionals are virtually unanimous in hailing as the greatest technical achievement in animation history. How unbelievably excited this prospect is, especially since it isn’t inconceivable that with the right money, no interference, and Williams’ involvement (no doubt guaranteed by the former two criteria), The Thief and the Cobbler could finally be finished. Although animation junkies like myself are particularly excited by this perhaps foolhardy hope, it could be a landmark in film history in general for a major, influential project to finally be finished.

TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME

Although ostensibly only of interest to fans of Twin Peaks, the scenes deleted from David Lynch’s 1992 film are among the most differentiated from final release that you could find. For the resurrection of Twin Peaks for the big screen, Lynch gathered nearly every regular from the series to shoot some scenes, but perhaps instigated by a disastrous screening at Cannes, ultimately decided to shear the sequences that did not contribute to the central narrative of Laura Palmer’s final week. Given this rationale, many have objected to some of what he elected to leave in, including David Bowie’s bizarre interlude as a returning FBI agent never mentioned in the series. But Fire Walk with Me’s strange coherency in the face of an occasionally episodic structure makes these omissions less pointed. For now, the prospect of seeing more footage with a huge array of beloved characters from the show – footage that has literally never been seen publicly outside of the Cannes screening, if even then – is tantalising enough. Lynch has said that there is around an hour of deleted scenes that he would like to unveil, but the shooting script reveals even more.

What has stood in the way is money, as usual. Lynch has insisted that if they are to be released – and he does seem to want them to be – these scenes must be restored, colour timed, scored and otherwise completed (this is where uncertainty emerges, given that a longer cut was apparently shown at Cannes – surely some of the scenes were finished for that). The cost is substantial, and for nearly 7 years New Line Cinema and then French copyright owner MK2 have tried to make a DVD release featuring the extra footage financially viable. Only whispers and potentialities have been uttered in the last couple of years, with Lynch and others hinting that talks have taken place and that it will one day happen. Campaigns have been undertaken, so now we can just sit back and wait, although given the palaver, I am reminded of Joss Whedon’s concern regarding his campaign to save Firefly: when does resuscitation become necrophilia?

Some of the more tantalising unseen bits include (thanks to the stalwart campaigners at FWWM Fight):

- Sheriff Harry Truman singing to Josie Packard
- Doc Hayward performing magic tricks for Laura and Donna
- Philip Jeffries (David Bowie) materialising in Buenos Aires
- Harry, Lucy, Andy, and Hawk at the Sheriff’s station
- Laura visiting Dr. Jacoby
- Big Ed watching Nadine skin a deer
- Cooper talking with Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) following Chet Desmond’s disappearance
- The Log Lady howling at the moon (!)
- Laura and Sarah Palmer share a cigarette
- Philip Jeffries in the Red Room (?)
- Big Ed and Norma enjoy a stolen evening in Ed’s truck
- Scenes between BOB and the Man from Another Place
- And, MOST excitingly, a few scenes taking place after the series involving Copper and Annie Blackburne (Heather Graham). While the script reveals that these scenes reveal nothing particularly useful regarding that tragic cliffhanger, they will be great to see. And perhaps Lynch, a famous on-set innovator, shot some additional, more telling material.

Other actors who shot scenes include Richard Beymer (Ben Horne, sorely missed from the film), David Patrick Kelly (Jerry Horne), and Don S. Davis (Major Briggs).

[Deleted scene images courtesy of FWWM Fight. Please check out and sign their petition]

THE THIN RED LINE

Terrence Malick’s 1998 film is a hypnotic and contemplative counterpoint to Saving Private Ryan from the same year, reaching beyond war to question the nature and value of human life and free will. But Malick’s early scripts for the film suggested a more conventional and brusque take on James Jones’s novel, and this material may indeed have been shot. Although nearly three hours long in its finished form, Malick allegedly created an initial cut of over six hours before finding his desired result within: a meditative, often silent perspective on World War II whose fascination with nature seems to divorce it from historical context entirely.

What was in those three hours? The script reveals that Adrien Brody’s Fife was one of the principal characters and the actor was initially promoted as such, appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair in the lead-up to release, yet he barely speaks in the final version. Brody had clearly shot this material, as he has spoken of discovering only at an early screening that his substantial role had been whittled down to virtually nothing (similarly, I don't recall the accompanying image appearing anywhere in the final cut). The elimination of Brody’s character and the shift of focus on to Jim Caviezel’s disillusioned Witt indicate that an entire storyline vanished in post-production.

More astonishingly, Malick had even more big-name actors working on the film than the final cut exhibits. Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Viggo Mortensen, Bill Pullman, Mickey Rourke, Lukas Haas, and Jared Leto – a stellar lineup in itself for any movie – were all jettisoned from the film. Perhaps their roles were small, but where on earth could they have fit in the narrative? I’d wager that the odd lurch into the final battle sequence after a relatively smooth progression was originally home to a far larger transitional storyline, which perhaps featured some of the missing cast members. Thornton even recorded a narration for the entire film before Malick opted for multiple voiceovers from a number of other characters.

I can’t help but be fascinated by what other version of Malick’s film could exist, although I suspect that with a film as delicate and masterful as this, releasing deleted footage or – god forbid – creating an alternate version would be nothing but destructive, distracting us from the finely crafted jewel we now have. Plus, this is not a product of studio interference or pressure – Malick himself made the cuts. But given the beauty and precision of every scene in Malick’s back catalogue, how glorious might it be to see these scenes in isolation, just once, especially the entire Adrien Brody storyline given how fine an actor he has since proven to be. However, this will never happen, as neither Fox nor Malick have ever shown the slightest inclination to release this footage… and I doubt I would want them to. But we can wonder. 

I'll post some musings on other lost or rediscovered cuts soon, including Kingdom of Heaven, Exorcist: The Beginning, Superman II, Heaven's Gate, The Magnificent Ambersons, and, of course, Blade Runner.

Links of choice

- David Simon in a tremendous Slate interview on The Wire, including the thematic plans for season five. I just hope McNulty is back full-time.

- IGN's Top 50 Lost Loose Ends

- Bookslut interviews Marjane Satrapi

- Slate examines the revelatory writer's room recordings from Battlestar Galactica

- the Library of America does its bit for SF recognition by devoting its next volume to Philip K. Dick.

The Prestige

It’s a relief that unlike Bryan Singer, Christopher Nolan was able to shoot a pet project between mammoth superhero instalments. It’s a shame to me that as good as Singer’s comic-book adaptations have been, he’s largely lost touch with his roots in smaller-scale drama, and I was concerned that Nolan may become similarly lost, despite my great love for Batman Begins. Thankfully we have The Prestige, a film version of Christopher Priest’s Victorian novel that he’s been developing for years, and it occupies an intriguing middle ground between the intelligent commercialism of Begins and the indie grit of Memento.

Aspiring 19th century London stage magicians Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) are cautious friends with differing goals. Angier wants to be a great showman, but Borden, less the performer and more the craftsman, wants to achieve sleights-of-hand never seen by audiences, to push the limits of stage magic. When an accident precipitated by Borden kills Angier’s wife, they become professional and personal rivals, which is only exacerbated by Borden’s immense success with the inexplicable trick “The Transported Man”, whose secret Angier becomes obsessed with discovering.

The script, by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, is a tremendous example of transposing a text into a new medium (nice coincidence, that ;D), creating a purposeful new vision of existing material. Priest’s novel is largely told through the two protagonists' diaries, the lengthy extracts of which effectively build up our resentment against the other character before their own entry swings the pendulum back. Nolan achieves a similar sense of equilibrium via disorientation using techniques best suited to cinema, playing again with linearity as he did in Memento but instead mixing up the chronology rather than outright reversing it. He does so in order to parallel the three acts of the film with those of a magic trick, as outlined in voiceover by Michael Caine’s trick designer Cutter at the start, so that the answers to this quite beguiling mystery are provided in the final third even though they are strewn throughout Borden and Angier’s respective journeys. The Prestige is further proof that Nolan has some of the best instincts in the business, staying faithful to a novel while still delivering a film with his own stamp on it.

This is a less psychologically probing film than Memento and Insomnia, and some have dismissed it as a well-done genre indulgence.I'll leave aside my own criticisms of those who criticise genre and just say that the film works spectacularly on both levels. This is an entertainment that never panders, enrapturing us with its enjoyable headspinners while never remaining emotionally distant. While the film lacks the intimacy of the aforementioned two Nolan efforts, its character work is clearly sufficient because we continually sympathise with two almost psychotically obsessed men. The dialogue is occasionally clunky and expository, but the performances make up for it. Jackman is both charismatic and unnervingly determined as Angier and funny as his foppish hired double, but I expect that The Fountain will be the film that reveals his true powers to us.

Bale is characteristically excellent, selling Borden’s awkwardness and selfishness while still arousing our support, particularly through his love for his daughter. His odd, tragic relationship with his wife is a high point, even if its resolution doesn’t feel earned. Caine is great as always, and he and Bale manage to be sufficiently different from their recent pairing as Bruce Wayne and Alfred that we're never reminded of it. Scarlett Johansson is adequate in a fairly thankless role that I’m surprised she took; perhaps working with Nolan was the attraction. And David Bowie makes a very welcome return to movies with an enigmatic and otherworldly performance that contributes to the film’s inexorable sense that what we are witnessing is somehow against nature, although we will not discover how until the conclusion.

What proportion of the audience guesses the twist in advance will be fun to discover. Having read the book, it was sadly spoiled for me, but this didn’t detract from the film. In fact, a second viewing will still be very rewarding just to observe how Nolan built it into the film, especially since I forgot the second twist, the catalyst for the film’s haunting final image. Don’t let anyone ruin this movie for you, as its glorious construction needs to be admired with unspoiled eyes. However,  it’s not just a puzzle to solve. The Prestige is also an emotionally rousing tale, delving into the nature of obsession and what gives a life purpose. Once again, I’m thankful for filmmakers like Nolan, who work within the system to create meaningful work to savour. 

A Scanner Darkly

Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly took almost two years to complete and finally arrived in American cinemas in July but was greeted with a collective shrug. Finally released in Australia this week, I was eager to discover whether the problem with Scanner was that it failed to work as a cohesive film in its own right. As a Philip K. Dick fan, I was also ecstatic at the prospect of seeing the very first faithful adaptation of his work for the screen. Even Blade Runner uses Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as inspiration rather than source text, resulting in a largely distinctive text where Dick’s themes and ideas are glimpsed rather than fully discerned. The freedom of a small budget has allowed Richard Linklater to adapt A Scanner Darkly close to the original bone, especially since the novel features little SF imagery. However, the rotoscoping of animation on top of the live-action makes this seem as otherworldly as the best of Dick.

Seven years in the future, a new drug called Substance D has hit it big, with over 20% of the population addicted. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is one, living in a ramshackle house with two other junkies: scheming knowledge-sponge Jim Barris (Robert Downey, Jr.) and exasperated Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson). Arctor’s girlfriend, Donna (Winona Ryder), is also their dealer, but Bob is actually a cop working undercover, who remains unseen by his police colleagues by wearing a regulation scramble suit, which replaces his own visage with a constantly shimmering display of thousands of others. But due to taking Substance D, Arctor is starting to lose track of who he is inside the house and out of it, especially when his unknowing colleagues order him to use bugs to essentially spy on himself in order to discover the source of Substance D.

Like the novel, A Scanner Darkly’s storyline is difficult to discern, especially in terms of how Arctor’s household fits into the grander plan regarding Substance D. But this doesn’t matter too much, as the film’s Dick-ian ambience of intense paranoia is enthralling enough in its surrealism to usher you through. This is accomplished largely through the rotoscoped animation, whose shimmering outlines and facades that resemble reality while leeched of detail heighten our perception of this world as being determined by the drug experience or even a product of it. The work that went into this was painstaking: 18 months of animation following a 23 day live-action shoot, but some have questioned its necessity, especially since the unreal, science fiction images are remarkably few. But I can’t imagine the live-action version of this film being anywhere near as infectious and insidious. With its vague boundaries, the animation seems to creep into your brain and scratch at its surface, fulfilling Dick’s ongoing theme of the invasion and compromise of the individual by external forces. Without the animation and its archetypal abilities, Scanner would be too distanced from the viewer; our understanding of the character’s plight actually comes in part from these unnerving cartoons.

The actors contribute a great deal to this too though. Reeves gives his loosest, most emotive performance in a long time, nailing the crucial role of Arctor. Downey is typically tremendous as the demented Barris, source of much of the film’s humour, often very black – this is a very funny film, both in the dialogue and the interaction between Downey, Harrelson, and Rory Cochrane as the delusional Charles Freck. Harrelson doesn’t get a great deal to do, but Ryder is pretty good, reminding us of her glory days – hopefully she can pull it together and get her career back on track. And on that note, let me say how fucking awesome it is that Downey is back in the fast lane. He’s one of the absolute best actors around – hell, I even want to buy his season of Ally McBeal on DVD because he was so damn entertaining on that show. Even in a quick shoot like A Scanner Darkly, Downey proves his immense value- kudos that man, and kudos to Linklater, as he’s perfect for Barris.

This is one of the most adventurous films in a long time, experimenting with a bold new filmmaking style, offering science fiction but with few of the familiar tropes, and featuring an often-impenetrable plot, all in the name of telling a very personal story by Philip K. Dick about the devastation of drug addiction. Whether it receives a Blade Runner-esque critical reappraisal can’t be predicted, but this is a lot better than it’s been made out to be. Check it out.

Preacher coming to HBO

Okay, there's been a trifle too much dicking about the marsh lately and not nearly enough blogging. That's about to change. For one thing, I'm going to cease restricting myself to lengthy reviews and make this the more encompassing blog I originally planned it to be, with news stories of note, links to great articles, and so forth.

The most surprising news of the last week was the announcement that HBO are developing an ongoing series based on Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's Preacher comic series for DC/Vertigo, which wrapped in 2000 after 66 issues telling of former priest Jesse Custer's mission to literally find God, who has abandoned Heaven and whom Jesse believes must be taken to task for his wrongdoing. Jesse has been possessed by Genesis, spawn of an angel and a demon, which allows him to command anyone to do anything, and he employs The Word on an intermittent road trip with fugitive girlfriend Tulip and Irish vampire Cassidy.

A concept like that is controversial enough in itself, but Ennis and Dillon are famed for their uncompromising violence and depraved humour, which has no equal, at least in mainstream comics. I've read the first two volumes of the series, and it's among the most confronting things I've read. I honestly don't know what to make of it, but I suspect that the grotesque and decidedly unsubtle veneer is a sleight of hand for Ennis' more sophisticated commentary about organised religion. Preacher has certainly attracted enough praise from various circles to support this, but until I read the whole thing I'll have to remain uncertain while being guiltily entertained by the lengths Ennis take things to. And they are long…

A movie adaptation was in the works for a while, but fan consensus was that an HBO series was the only way to faithfully translate the story, given its content. Lo and behold, here it is, and I'm genuinely shocked - I expected the underwhelming critical response to Carnivale and its subsequent cancellation would have put HBO off the supernatural for quite a while, and Carnivale was much more allusive than Preacher; if critics didn't respond to that, I can't imagine the response that Preacher will receive, especially given the content. If even a few of Ennis's setpieces are preserved for the show, they will rank among the most horrendous things ever broadcast on American television - I'm amazed even Vertigo allowed some of it through. HBO has picked one hell of an incendiary property here, although this does suit their stated desire for originality - "it's not TV, it's HBO". But Preacher could be bold in a far less beneficial sense.

Plus, they haven't hired a promising team. HBO have prided themselves on recruiting visionary creators with proven artistic track records - even The Wire's East Coast creator David Simon had the Emmy-winning and hugely praised mini-series The Corner behind him. The Preacher pilot will be scripted by Mark Steven Johnson (writer-director of the drubbed Daredevil and the potentially woeful Ghost Rider) and directed by Howard Deutch (director of comedies like Pretty in Pink and the Grumpy Old Men films, also written by Johnson). These names are not remotely prestigious or evidently appropriate for a show like Preacher. But then, HBO has never adapted an existing property for an ongoing series before (although this is shocking in itself), so I suppose the previous rules don't apply: vision is not a prime requirement since the story is already out there. But I'm still surprised that HBO went to these guys for one of their dramas, regardless of its origins. Perhaps they'll surprise us. We won't know until it's on the air.

But this development reminds me of my dilemma about comic adaptations, particularly of long-form narrative comics like Preacher and The Sandman. A movie will be too short and could only hope to capture the original's spirit, but the freedom of an ongoing TV show could be similarly redundant: we already have this story in episodic form, and to hew too close to the original telling begs the question of 'why do it at all?' Religiously faithful translations almost always seem superfluous since they have failed to justify themselves as separate texts and often because they have not modified the book to suit a visual medium. The turgid, overlong Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a recent example of this, which then gave way to the tighter, more cinematic Prisoner of Azkaban. Johnson does not appear to have heeded this though. From Sci-Fi Wire:

"I gave [HBO] the comics, and I said, 'Every issue is an hour.' And it's exactly the book. ... I had my meeting yesterday, and [Preacher creator] Garth Ennis is on the phone, and we're all in the room, and Garth is like, 'You don't have to be so beholden to the comic.' And I'm like, 'No, no, no. It's got to be like the comic.' So that's what's so brilliant about it."

Granted, it must be thrilling to be able to preserve a cherished text on screen, but when the author tells you to be less adherent to it, you should listen. Comics and television share an episodic format, so to merely film the existing episodes becomes redundant, especially on a network of HBO’s proven calibre and creative flexibility – they would let you do something new. But they are very different mediums anyway, and to merely film the comics will likely result in an undead facsimile rather than a worthy alternate text; the effect will be similar to a direct translation of prose without the translator modifying the result to create coherency. To transform a text for another medium is not to betray it, but in many cases to be more faithful by recognising what makes it universal and making the necessary changes for the new delivery mechanism, in this case television. The crucial flaw of Johnson’s Daredevil film was that his passion for the material overrode his judgement about what would work in cinema and what wouldn’t – among other things, supervillain posturing is easier to get away with on the page than when an actor has to deliver the lines. Will Johnson’s love of Preacher blind him from doing it the greater service, which is to prove its value by modifying it for the screen rather than exposing it to the accusation that it is merely a comics curiosity that does not belong outside of those pages? First it has to get to series though, so we won’t have to wonder for a while yet.

But this may partly tie into my increasing ambivalence regarding adaptations for film and television, particularly of comics. Since both media are both visual and written, to adapt a graphic novel or a long-form self-contained comic series for the screen potentially belittles them, implying that film can capitalise upon these glorified storyboards and do them better justice. But check out Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics for a revelatory explanation of why comics are unique, and why film adaptations are even less worth the trouble than those of a prose novel. With an iconic visual text like Watchmen, I’m torn between the tremendous promise for the film version that is Zack Snyder and an inner scream that a movie is completely bloody pointless, not just because of the original’s complexity (most novels cannot be wholly preserved in that sense on film either) but because the story is so carefully constructed as a comic that a film, even an HBO mini-series as many have called for, could only be a strange, parallel-universe monster incarnation of the story. As much as I liked V for Vendetta, this nagging demand of ‘what’s the point?’ arose while watching it and still does. But this is all an essay for another time…