Studio sanitizer

This post has nothing to do with Seven, but I find this picture enormously entertaining and slightly relevant.

In keeping with yesterday's post about getting acquainted with the classics, last night, very late, I decided to watch the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Okay so spoiler warnings, but I'm probably the only person in America who hadn't seen this yet so I'm not too concerned.

And I'm sure I'm not the first person to make the observation that follows, but it's my blog so I'm gonna observe.

In the little post film recap from the old movies expert guy, he mentioned that originally the film was supposed to end on Miles standing in the middle of the street, unable to get anyone to believe him. And the studio decided it was too gloomy and ambiguous so they added the frame of Miles talking to some people about what happened, complete with the last minute warning that may have saved the human race.

Way to go, studio.

First of all, opening with Miles alone after he escaped lets us all know right from the start that his girlfriend didn't make it, so when we spend this whole movie watching them run from the aliens, we already know what happens to her. It takes out a lot of the tension, like when the commercials for Lost are like "Somebody will die in this episode!"

God dammit. Don't tell me someone will die. Then I spend the whole episode sitting around waiting for somebody to kick the bucket, and I'd really just rather let the story unfold. So I didn't want to know that Miles ended up alone. I wanted to think his girlfriend might stand a chance.

And that scene of him in front of the cars is so haunting. He's so helpless. But by changing it so that yay! maybe people will be saved, kinda! It takes all the bite out of the ending. It deflates what was a powerful scene. Hell, the film analysis guy said that the scene with the cars is so iconic that Kevin McArthy was asked to repeat it all through his career. The most powerful moment of the film, and it was sanitized by the studio's underestimation of its audience.

I've been reading Down and Dirty Pictures and this morning I read about Reservoir Dogs. Apparently Harvey Weinstein was adamant about removing the ear cutting scene. He thought the ladies of the world would never tolerate that level of violence.

(Slight spoiler warnings but if you haven't seen it I'm not sure we can be friends.)

But Quentin Tarantino, to his great credit, held his ground. Can you imagine that film without that scene? Sure, it would be a slightly less violent film, maybe easier to watch without that extra moment of discomfort, but doesn't it just make you glad when the cop shoots Michael Madsen? Without that scene you don't get that extra glimpse of his evil. You kind of like his crazy quirkiness, but the second he does that he's gone too far. It's just powerful. And removing it could have been the difference between a good film and the fucking brilliant picture it is.

I guess the lesson there is that sometimes you have to fight the power.