Not exactly similiar but The Godfather’s story to getting made and becoming one the greatest movies of all time is interesting. Also Coppola’s Apocalypse Now had a harsh and long road to fruition! Most of Gilliam’s films are challenges from start to finish. He had problems on Twleve Monkeys also.
Gilliams film adaptation of Don Quote. Also there is Apocalypse now, the Alien movie Fincher Directed and the Director of American history X does not claim it.
Gilliam always has problems. Fincher seems to have this amazing thing going for him where people just trust his vision. I know he had another cut of Zodiac, but I don’t know that that was an issue. Maybe it’s just because Fincher turned out to be soooo right about Alien3.
Studios have been interfering with films since time immemorial, as Erich von Stroheim (GREED) and Orson Welles (THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS) will ruefully confirm: both films were severely cut and significantly distorted by other hands (AMBERSONS had a new, much more upbeat ending, forcibly added), and the cut footage was then destroyed, making restoration impossible.
Thankfully, all three cuts of Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL still exist and can be directly compared on the latest DVD release – though the debate here is whether the Murch/Rosenbaum “restoration” is truer to Welles’ vision than the more familiar version (personally, I think the jury’s still out: I really don’t think the famous opening shot works without the Henry Mancini score).
Sergei Eisenstein suffered an even worse fate with BEZHIN MEADOW, which was deliberately destroyed outright: all that survives are stills. Abel Gance is an interesting case, as he was himself responsible for significantly shortened and altered versions of NAPOLEON (released in 1934 and 1971), both by all accounts drastically inferior to the 1927 original.
Blade Runner is a classic example. At least seven versions exist.
there is also"The Thief and the Cobbler".Richard Williams’ animated film that took over 30 years to animate,ran into several productions problems,finacial investor interference,and unfair comparisons to Disney’s "Aladdin"and has about 3 different versions (the miramax version retitled “Arabian Knight” for its very limited theatrical release,The “Fred Calvert” version called “The Princess and the Cobbler” and the “Recobbled” version done by fans,given back its original title)
I don’t think there were any changes made to it, but THE STUNT MAN was in similar cause celebre status. The studio sat on it until enough critics (who saw it at festivals) cried loudly enough to embarass the studio into releasing it.
In reference to 2 Inches, there are documentaries about both Don Quixote and Apocalypse Now that are fantastically entertaining that show how those films went down in films (or almost did). The one for Don Quixote was Lost in La Mancha and the one for Apocalypse Now was Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, both of which I’d recommend checking out.
Bruce-Also The Hamster Factor about the filming of Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.
once upon a time in america, by sergio leone.
and there’s always the notorious heaven’s gate!
Bill Forsyth’s Being Human – It was absolutely butchered by cuts, and, even worse, a perfectly wrong-note VO narration by…Theresa Russell! I love Forsyth’s work all the way back to Gregory’s Girl…
Apparently Michael Mann’s “Manhunter” as a different cut, but from my understanding most of Mann’s cuts are always tweaked just a little by him for a home video release. Though the alterations are not as significant as they were in Brazil or Aliens 3, mind you.
@Jeb — I think it’s interesting that, in the commentary on the Criterion disc, Gilliam mentions that the footage of the cabin at the end (in Sam’s dream) is reminiscent of (or maybe even a nod to) the ending of Blade Runner. The ending he’s referring to is, of course, the studio-edited “happy ending” version of the film that the studios insisted on (and that Ridley Scott didn’t much care for). Anecdotally, the Blade Runner footage that the studio put in, and to which Gilliam was referring, happens to actually have been shot for Kubrick’s The Shining.
In a general sense, anyway, I find the nature of the edits to Gilliam’s and Scott’s films to be similar. They’re both very visual, imaginitive, lavish directors, but can (in my opinion) be kind of sloppy. They both suffer from awkward pacing at times, and Gilliam’s jokes are sometimes cheesy. Luckily, it’s the vision and sense of wonder that we watch Gilliam for, and not, say, his technical precision. (Indeed, though there’s something British about Gilliam, having worked with Monty Python for as long as he did, this quality of running in with loose guns seems to me rather American.)
That said, I love the Brazil Director’s Cut!
i know Gilliam had troubles with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, especially when it came to the Writer’s Guild (the special edition on Criterion has an interview with him, which shows a photo of him burning his Guild-member’s card), and i’m reminded of how long it took to get Watchmen made because of licensing and rights issues. of course, these are legal issues rather than studio interfereences (i’m not sure if that’s spelled close to being right…), but the length of time wasted on both due to commercial rather than artistic interests seems absurdly unnecessary. even though Alan Moore hasn’t blessed the Watchmen film, i’d say both films i’ve mentioned were lucky to be released in spite of all the shit stacked up against those who wanted to make them, and i’m glad both films were made.
@Marq — And for Gilliam, the troubles just continued. Munchausen was ruinously overbudget, La Mancha was just plain ruined—in both cases because the money wasn’t available to match the vision. I find it instructive that, like burning his Guild card, Gilliam says on the Brazil DVD about Siskel and/or Ebert, “fuck ’em” (and then laughs). It’s this totally “man apart” attitude that plagues his production, but also, of course, precisely the attitude for which we watch his films in the first place.
I suppose that Gilliam is rather like Sam in that sense. You can hear something almost self-reflective in Gilliam’s tone when he describes, at the very end of the film, how Sam wins by going inside his head, where he’s free…
The original cut of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate was 325 minutes long. He was forced to cut it down to 219 minutes. When that version was not well received at the premiere, the film was cut again, this time down to 149 minutes. The 219-minute “director’s cut” was later aired on the old Z Channel (the first time the term was used as a marketing hook), and that version went on to become the definitive version.
@ Marq, it’s interesting that you mention “Watchmen”, because Gilliam had his hands on that film at it’s inception.
An hour-and-a-half of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America was hacked off, on its release in the US.
Alex
I was interested in finding out about other movies that had problems similar to Brazil. I think the Criterion set for Brazil is amazing and the Love Conquers All version of the film is a feat. It completely changes the entire movie (for the worse). I know of several movies with workprint versions different from the theatrical or directors cut but I’m more interested in knowing if there are other movies where the studios intervention and subsequent re-cut is as dramatic as what Brazil experienced.