This all makes me wonder about the relationship between a director and a studio head and an author and an editor and how the two compare.

It's pretty common knowledge that a lot of brand name, popular writers, such as Stephen King, Get to a point where they're so popular the public will buy whatever they commit to paper, be it a ripping good yarn or a friggin grocery list. It's also pretty well known that once the author gets to this point, either the author's own ego or the apathy of the publishing company makes it so that author's works are effectively not edited anymore.

And almost universally, at that point, the author's works begin to go downhill.

The fact is an author gets too attached to his own writing. He can't see the forest for the trees. He can't see that this scene, although brilliantly written, masterfully paced, and elegantly crafted, does nothing at all to further the plot or provide characterization or setting. He can't look at it with the proper sense of detachment and see that his wonderful scene, his baby, the scene he spent hours writing, needs to be cut.

There are many "Author's Prefered Edition" and "Unedited Version"s of books out there, although it's still not nearly as common as the ubiqitous "Director's Cut" of a movie (it seems like EVERY damn movie these days has a Director's Cut) but I have to wonder, in many cases, if the books are actually better or just stroke the author's ego more by keeping that wonderful scene that basically did nothing. I have experience with exactly one "Unedited Version" of a book, and that was Stephen King's "The Stand". I read both versions. I can definitly say I liked the unedited version quite well--perhaps even better than the original. But looking at it critically, I can see maybe one scene that I felt *shouldn't* have been cut from the original. The others, while enjoyable, were not missed in the edited version.

Now, if an editor makes a statement such as "Make it 400 pages shorter" (which is apparently what happened with King with The Stand) it may be that he's just being stupid, that he's only looking at the bottom line (in this case, they felt at the time that people would get upset by paying a three or four dollar premium for a hardcover of the book over the cost of a normal hardcover, and that's what they'd have to charge to recoup the cost of binding and shipping those four hundred extra pages). But I also think many times the editor, having years of experience in the business and a talent that, frankly, many authors do *not* have, can see that the story can easily be told in 400 less pages and still keep the author's "vision" intact. And after making the cuts, sometimes the author sees it too. And sometimes not--and we end up with the "Prefered Edition" later on...

I often wonder if the same might apply to movies. Sure, It's fairly obvious to most people that the DC of "Blade Runner" is superior to the theatrical version. But what about "Natural Born Killers"? From what I heard, the DC of that movie took an already bad two hour and twenty minute movie and made it into an even worse three hour movie. I'm inclined to believe that studios more often meddle with movies in a ham-handed way than editors do with books. It's clear that studios much prefer "happy" or "upbeat" endings to (often more artistically correct) downers. They feel that word of mouth about a downbeat ending to a movie will keep people away. I'm fairly inclined to believe it might, in many cases.

But I guess my real point is, why is editing generally considered good for book authors but bad for movie directors? It's a fun question to ponder.

-- Dave