Tuesday 2 February 2021

Mask - Director's Cut (1985 Peter Bogdanovich)

Like Texasville, this begins with a leisurely pan across the California landscape, then it begins to cut in, and as we get closer to Rocky's house the Bruce Springsteen (which we can now hear) gets louder until we're actually in his bedroom. The intention was to introduce him gently to the audience. This scene was written by Peter - his other rewrites weren't credited, as usual.

The missing scenes - particularly the funeral - do add depth, but as to the studio ruining the colour, and Laszlo's depth of field, I can't see any difference at all:

Previous version

Director's cut

Maybe they already corrected it for the previous release.

Interesting that Rob Lowe was almost cast before Stolz came along and stole the part.

It's funny watching this now, the way Cher's performance is edited because she 'can't act'. And that he almost certainly said to her 'faster' on more than one occasion. Also interesting hearing him talk about the way most directors shoot every scene from all different positions, but he has already edited the scene in his mind and just shoots what he needs, like Billy Wilder did.


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