The Director’s Cut, or Why I Don’t Go To The Movies

Have you ever purchased a DVD of a popular movie and seen “Director’s Cut” on the menu screen?  Usually, this is an opportunity to watch the movie as the director intended, not as the marketing gurus who test the film on audiences have it edited for theatrical release (read:  Shortened.  Audiences as a whole seem to have short attention spans).  Sometimes the marketing folks are right in the changes they make to appeal to the masses; often they aren’t.

Or maybe I’m not one of the masses.  My hubby and I started watching the director’s cut of some of our favorites and even some losers (Waterworld?  Who would’ve thought that movie was good, actually?  But watch the director’s cut version and give it a second chance. Same for Stargate and The Abyss).  Maybe I have more respect for the creative artist, because I usually prefer the director’s vision of a film.

Case in point: The Natural

This 1984 Robert Redford classic (directed by Barry Levinson) was a box-office disappointment but is beloved by collectors.  We bought the videotape as soon as it was released, and so did millions of others.  It became a video bestseller.  Now we own the 2-DVD set.  What’s not to love in this corny, feel-good story about a guy with honor who loves baseball?  Roy Hobbs is patient with children but clueless that he is a father, even when his former sweetheart Iris Gaines tells him she has a son.  (I later learned that the novel, a not-so-happy-ending story written by Bernard Malamud, is loosely based on  a number of baseball stories, including the infamous 1919 scandal involving Shoeless Joe Jackson and the shooting of Chicago shortstop Billy Jurges by a mysterious showgirl, and/or the shooting of Eddie Waitkus, a Philadelphia player who recovered and made a comeback.)

If you’ve seen the movie, you know it has a lengthy first act, in which we see young Roy playing pitch with his father while young Iris watches.  Later, a teenager Roy gets a tryout for the Cubs and tells Iris he wants to marry her.  They make love, he boards a train, meets mysterious Harriet Byrd, strikes out the famous “Hammer” during a train stop, then gets shot by Harriet at his hotel in Chicago.  She leaps out the window to her death, and that’s that.  Fast forward sixteen years later and Roy Hobbs shows up in New York as a middle-age rookie for the Knights.

The director, however, had a different vision, one he finally could show when the DVD was released.  His version added a mere 6 minutes but cut the first act substantially.  Instead of this lengthy prologue, the story begins in 1939 with the thirty-four-year-old Roy returning to his now-vacant childhood home to retrieve his precious homemade bat.  Brief flashbacks give us glimpses of the memories the homecoming evoke: playing catch with his dad, rushing to his father’s side when he dies of a heart attack, lightning striking the tree that gives him the wood to make his bat, and then etching the name “Wonder Boy” into the bat.  While Roy waits at the train station, he experiences another flashback, to the time he shared the news of his Cubs tryout with Iris, asking her to marry him then making love in the barn.  Riding the train, Roy remembers more vignettes: meeting the sportswriter Max Mercy, pitching to the “Slugger” and striking him out, meeting Harriet Byrd. By showing these as pieces of memory instead of a linear “prologue,” Levinson shortened the first act and got us right in to the story.

The film is rich in symbolism, too.  When Roy finally makes it to major league baseball, he emerges from the long, dark tunnel that leads to the dugout into daylight, arriving where he’d been headed sixteen years earlier before Harriet Byrd shot him.  Levinson uses more quick flashbacks to show how Roy is haunted by his bad judgment about Harriet.  One scene not in the original is during an away game when Roy checks into his hotel room.  The maid turns toward him and for a moment, he sees Harriet holding the gun.  Why this scene was deleted for the theatrical version baffles me. It also makes his later “I should have seen it coming” speech to Iris more meaningful.

If you get the chance to see the director’s cut of The Natural, please watch it.  You’ll see the film as it should be seen.  Another film I discovered improved by the director’s cut is Kate & Leopold.  In this fun, time travel romance, Kate’s old boyfriend Stuart brings Leopold into the future, messing up all the elevators because Leopold–with the help of his servant Otis–invented the elevator.  If Stuart doesn’t return Leopold to the past before the portal closes, he will create all kinds of chaos in the future.  It’s an entertaining, ticking clock tale.  While watching it, though, I questioned whether Stuart would have suffered and risked so much just to protect the invention.  Somehow, his motivation didn’t ring true.

SPOILER ALERT: Don’t read further if you haven’t seen Kate & Leopold.

Then I watched the director’s cut of Kate & Leopold.  The deleted scenes changed everything!  We learn that Stuart is extremely motivated to right his wrong because it jeopardizes his very existence.  Leopold is his great grandfather!  Big motivation, much bigger than worrying about elevators. The director’s cut is a mere 5 minutes longer, but I’m guessing length wasn’t the deciding factor.  Because Stuart and Kate had been lovers in the back story, it suggests incest, since Kate winds up being Stuart’s great grandmother when she travels back in time to marry Leopold.  (Then I’m wondering, since when is Hollywood worried about a little thing like incest?) Actually, I find nothing about the director’s cut to offend except Meg Ryan’s hairdo, which is also in the theatrical release version. *LOL*

The discovery of director’s cuts in DVDs has reinforced my preference to watching movies at home rather than in the cinema.  Not only can I pause the movie to run to the bathroom, I can watch whatever version I want, eat my own food, and watch the movie as often as I want.  Buying DVDs is cheaper in the long run, at least for me.  If you buy or rent DVDs, check out the director’s cut.  You may discover a better, more artistic film.  Or you may decide the marketing folks knew their business after all!

Diva Cheryl