The Kindest Cut : Laser Discs Give Directors a Second Chance at Their Films

A quiet revolution led by some of the most powerful creative figures in the filmmaking industry will pick up steam today with the release of a longer, re-edited version of the 1986 science-fiction thriller “Aliens” by director James Cameron, the man behind last summer’s $204-million blockbuster, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

The catch is, only people who own laser disc players--about 750,000 nationwide--will be able to watch the wide-screen edition of FoxVideo’s “Aliens,” featuring 17 tightly edited minutes of footage, dialogue and special effects from Cameron’s original rough cut.

“In essence, it’s a different film,” Cameron said last week after viewing the completed laser for the first time. “There’s a longer, slower turning of the screw. (Nearly) 20 minutes were put back in the body of the film that were originally scripted and shot. So clearly it is the film I intended to make at the time I was writing and shooting. But in post-production, you get into certain decisions based on economics.”

Although Kevin Costner proved with “Dances With Wolves” that a three-hour movie could break the box-office bank, studios today still prefer films less than two hours in length.

“This is an alternate version of the movie made possible in an electronic medium where there are no time constraints, no exhibitors wanting to turn over more ticket sales in a 24-hour period,” Cameron said.

Increasingly, top directors today are using the laser format as a playground to expand, improve or comment on the original theatrical presentation of their films:

* Director Peter Bogdanovich edited seven minutes of unused footage into his 1971 classic “The Last Picture Show” for laser in August, and would like to do the same for the film’s 1990 sequel, “Texasville.”

* Half a dozen scenes left out of director Terry Gilliam’s film “The Fisher King” are being added to the end of its laser release next year. Next up, Gilliam will tackle an extensive director’s cut of “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.”

* First-time director John Singleton will tack a deleted scene to the end of “Boyz N the Hood” for an upcoming laser version.

* Several sources say that Costner’s original four-hour version of “Wolves,” doing strong theatrical business in England now, will be released in its entirety on laser.

* Director Danny DeVito, who released “War of the Roses” on laser in September with previously cut scenes added to the end, is going to film separate conversations and even rehearsals of his next film, “Hoffa,” which he begins shooting next month, specifically for a special laser version that may be two years down the road. He’s doing it, he said, “just so that the process will be remembered.”

In most of these cases, the directors are recording a separate voice track with running commentary throughout the film. And unique supplemental material that the laser viewer can flip through frame by frame is usually provided in the form of production photographs, original storyboards and countless pages of screenplay drafts.

“I think of this as a great way to keep an archival record of the work,” said DeVito, who hunched over a VCR in his hotel room at night when he was shooting “Other People’s Money” and watched “War of the Roses” over and over, recording his kvetches on a little digital audio tape recorder, which ultimately became his voice track on laser.

“Things go ‘bye bye’ once you do them and turn them over to the studio,” DeVito said. “With laser, you can collect all the things that usually go up in smoke, even thoughts you went through at the time, so one day your kids can look at it and say, ‘This is what Daddy was thinking when he made this picture.’ ”

Movie buffs have been singing the praises of lasers for years. Laser picture quality is 60% sharper than VHS tapes, the sound is digitally mastered and the plastic, rainbow-colored discs are tough and don’t degenerate over time. The discs have never caught on in a big way, though, largely because laser machines don’t record programming and there are few outlets that rent laser discs.

But with sales of laser software this year estimated at $300 million, compared to $175 million in 1990, studios are beginning to pay more attention. And special-edition laser discs, which sell from $80 to $120, are becoming big business.

FoxVideo, Walt Disney and Orion have all worked out exclusive distribution deals with Image Entertainment, for example, and are jointly developing high-price laser releases: Fox with “Roses” and “Aliens,” Disney with “Fantasia” and Orion, according to sources, with “Wolves.”

“Because the laser-disc audience is constantly expanding, we’re now in a position to put more time, energy and resources into these special editions,” said David Del Grosso, vice president of marketing for Image. “We have a bigger audience to play to. This is not your $2 rent-for-one-evening mentality. In many ways, these special lasers that directors participate in are a form of art restoration, and consumers are investing in something that will last a lifetime.”

Most of the directors who have brought their efforts to laser, in fact, do claim to be laser enthusiasts. They also see the medium as a way of overcoming problems that all directors face: the tremendous pressure in delivering their films on time, on budget and within an acceptable time limit.

“It’s a problem with almost every film you do,” said Gilliam, whose epic battle with MCA Inc. President Sid Sheinberg to release his version of his 1985 fantasy “Brazil” became the stuff of legend in Hollywood. “When you’re finishing off a film, it’s the most stressful time in the filmmaking process. Everybody wants success, especially the director. So you find yourself listening to every criticism. And you sometimes overreact, because you’re trying too hard to please.

“And oftentimes with the benefit of hindsight and distance, you look at it fresh and ask yourself, ‘How could I have done that?’ or ‘Why didn’t I do this?’ ”

When asked what Gilliam will change in “Munchausen,” he said nothing big and special, just “little things.”

“Tiny moments,” he said, “pacing a scene, putting a pause where there isn’t a pause. It’s those little things that are so hard to quantify and justify at the time (of editing). When you try to defend those things, people in positions of power sort of look blankly at you like you’re a babbling madman.”

Bogdanovich, the first director to extensively re-edit a movie for laser with “Picture Show,” agreed that snap decisions must be made as a film’s delivery date approaches.

“I’m not being overly political and saying I had problems with the studio,” he explained. “It’s just that the mechanics of making pictures is such that you have to rush to make your release date. You don’t have time to preview. You’re under pressure. You make mistakes.

“It’s an odd feeling, because here was ‘The Last Picture Show,’ which certainly got good notices and did great business and won Academy Awards, but in the back of my mind I always felt this wasn’t quite the cut I would have released.”

Bogdanovich’s original version of the film was 2 hours and 25 minutes, although it was released in theaters less than two hours in length. Bogdanovich, whose “Picture Show” was only his second directorial effort, said he brought “20 years more life experience” into the laser re-edit.

“I made Cybill (Shepherd’s) character clearer,” he said of the laser cut. “As a younger man, I don’t think I understood the woman’s point of view as well as I do now. I think she would have been more likable, more understandable. She was the one most damaged by the original cut. In this (laser) version, she’s a fuller character.”

Cameron, however, is not completely comfortable with Bogdanovich’s approach. What would classic movies look like, he wonders, if older, wiser directors today went back and retooled their handiwork?

“You’re getting into a revisionism, when the director’s ideas have changed, so he redirects the film. That’s not as valid,” Cameron said. “There’s also a philosophical issue: If you release a movie, that’s your statement.”

In Cameron’s case, the longer version of “Aliens” was his original rough cut of the film before paring it down for theatrical release. Cameron points out that he has final cut on all his films, painful as those cuts sometimes are.

“If there’s a lot of press about how the big bad studio made the director cut the movie and the director finally won by getting his cut out, it’s going to create antipathy between studios and filmmakers over these special versions,” Cameron said. “And that will kill them. They won’t happen, because they require money and cooperation.”

Cameron said he has been toying with the idea of reinserting some scenes, about 10 minutes in all, for a laser release of his $60-million epic “The Abyss.” But that would be a costly task because many of the special effects were never finished. Cameron said production on the laser edition of “Aliens,” for which the scenes were more complete, cost about $100,000.

The longer version of “Aliens” was actually completed several years ago, Cameron said, and it has lain around at Fox ever since. Jim Griffiths, executive vice president of corporate operations for Fox, sums up why “Aliens” was finally released in two words: “Aliens 3.” The third installment in the “Alien” series is due in theaters Memorial Day weekend.

“That’s why it’s been sitting there for three years,” Griffiths said. “And it comes up all the time. We knew that we were always in development with ‘Aliens 3,’ and we felt it was important to add some luster to the title and create awareness.”

Cameron believes there may have been more behind the delay, though.

“I think there’s a psychology that if people like the alternate version better, the studio feels like they’re admitting they did something wrong the first time,” Cameron said. “That’s why it’s important to couch these laser releases as alternate versions. This is the closest we can get to what was originally envisioned.”

By most accounts, the first time the second audio track was used for narrative on a laser disc was in 1984, when Los Angeles County Museum of Art film curator Ron Haver discussed anecdotes about the making of “King Kong” for the Voyager Co.

Directors commenting on their films is an even more recent phenomenon. Three years ago, director Michael Powell sat down with Martin Scorsese to do a commentary on two of Powell’s early classics, 1943’s “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and 1946’s “Black Narcissus.”

“Michael Powell was in my office in 1988, when he was about 80,” said Jonathan Turell, a partner in the Voyager Co., a firm that pioneered licensing films from studios to create special laser editions. “And he was basically a frail old man at the time. We had distributed his films for years with Janus Films. We showed him what you could do with laser discs, and there was this glimmer of a man who said, ‘Wow, what I could do if I were younger with that technology.’ ”

After working with Powell, Scorsese decided to go back to do commentary on two of his classics, “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” which were released on laser last year by Voyager’s Criterion Collection. Other upcoming Voyager projects include director John Schlesinger and producer Jerome Hellman on “Midnight Cowboy” and, next month, director Sydney Pollack discussing “Tootsie” with additional scenes and a 50th anniversary release of Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” featuring interviews with 35 producers and directors.

As more directors and studios get involved in these special laser editions, Fox’s Griffiths expects the laser market--which, despite its technical superiority, still languishes in the shadow of video cassettes--to expand further.

“Even if a project like ‘War of the Roses’ is a break-even project, it’s benefiting us in two ways,” Griffiths said. “One, it’s something Danny wanted to do, and when we can accommodate Danny and make him feel good, that’s good for the studio. Secondly, we’re releasing product in the laser disc market, and we feel that we’re building that brand of distribution.”

Gilliam, however, warns about gushing too much over laser releases. He suggested that while directors may have a new forum in the laser arena, he sees them losing power in an ever-changing film market.

“We’re not marching to a brilliant future,” he said. “We’re just keeping the balance. For every step forward in the film industry, there’s a retrograde going on somewhere.”