> I haven't seen either version of "Gangs" so it's hard to say. Poland says he likes the longer version more, but he's not really a reliable critic.

Definitely true. But I'm not taking his word for it; I'm just recognizing what I believe to be the simple *fact* that Martin Scorsese is a better editor than Harvey Weinstein is. But you have an interesting counter-example in The Big Sleep, where studio interference helped. Like you, though, I suspect that was a happy coincidence. The other thing is, the studio called for *more* rather than *less* (tweaks aside). In calling for more, that put the onus back on the writers and director to create the material. Cuts, on the other hand, may not involve the director at all: snip snip, and that's that.

> What's interesting is how many "director's cuts" are released where the director actually had the final cut in the theatrical version. If I remember right, Cameron Crowe wasn't forced to cut "Almost Famous" by the studio. I don't think Cameron was forced to cut "Abyss" either (though I may be wrong on that).

I was trying to avoid examples like that, just because it's a different topic. The Hot Button has some reader responses about directors messing themselves up. Spielberg's A.I. and Scott's Gladiator were popular targets. I didn't realize Almost Famous fell into that category.

Like you say, that's a different situation. If the director makes a mistake, who could have done better? Sometimes the mistake is an avoidable one: directors can get distracted worrying about how their work will sell, rather than how it works. But sometimes it's too hard to predict. Again, I like the fact that the world of videos and DVDs allows directors to go back and make improvements. I'd just as soon this not happen all the time, because it's frustrating to have seen a movie and then discover that it was the wrong cut, but if it's a choice between having a perfected cut and not, I'll take it.

> I have an interesting thought, though. The absolute best American movies were made during the peak of the American studio system. . . . I'm at a loss to explain this.

Honestly, I think it has more to do with society in the 1930s and 1940s than the studio system itself. In general, people had more educated and developed tastes. While there was certainly a rift between "critics" and "movie-goers" as there is today, it wasn't so wide: Citizen Kane didn't make a lot of money, but Casablanca made plenty. Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind made more money than any other movie in history. Can you imagine a historical epic without any teen idols or gun fights making any serious money today? Special effects came harder, so the movies had to rely on stories and characters and writing -- the same things that make a great movie today -- and these were the things that audiences appreciated; therefore, they were the things that studios were interested in delivering. Whether the studios were good at it or not, the point is that their goals in the editing room were not as divergent from those of the filmmakers as they are today. Today, the rift between what sells and what's good is wider than it's ever been. Just look at what's opened in the past few weeks: Extreme Ops? The Hot Chick? (Ebert doesn't even have to bemoan the bygone days of the 1940s: in his review of The Hot Chick, he bemoans the bygone days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period well beyond the studio system.) These movies would never have been given the time of day 50 years ago, even with the crude parts removed in keeping with the tastes of the era. (Admittedly, in many cases such edits wouldn't leave much.) I'm not saying bad movies weren't made; I'm just saying audiences were less inclined to spend money on them.