Here's something I should have asked Thomas Meehan about last night. It is not unusual for filmmakers to have to agonize about cutting something they love in a movie. He joked about how the big problem was that someone had to go tell Nathan Lane his opening star number was out…but the big problems were, first of all, that the folks behind the movie loved that song and felt it belonged there even when audience previews indicated otherwise. Also, of course, an awful lot of time and moola had been spent on the material that was now to be removed, and some would probably have a hard time with the admission that they'd "wasted" so much cash and effort.
So here's the question part. I'm wondering if in this era of DVDs getting to be so important and becoming the primary source of movie income, it's a lot easier to make that kind of decision.
Years ago, I escorted an actress friend to the cast 'n' crew screening of a movie she'd been in. As we arrived, the director pulled us aside to inform her that her part had been cut. Strictly for time considerations, he said. He consoled her that her scenes would be reinstated when the movie came out on home video. This was back in Beta/VHS days when it was not automatically assumed that every movie would even have a home video release and when that wasn't such a big deal. (In this case, the movie didn't come out on tape for a couple of years and when it did, my friend's scenes were not reinstated.)
These days, the DVD is almost as important as the theatrical release — with some films, more important — so there wasn't even a moment when it was conceivable that Lane's hard work in the deleted number would be lost or go unseen. In fact, it will even become a selling point for the DVD. You know: You saw it in the theaters but you didn't see all of it. Perhaps they'll incorporate it on that DVD in some way that allows you to view the entire movie with or without it…or maybe some future DVD release will put it right back as if it had never been omitted at all. In any case, it's not lost or relegated to obscurity the way some musical numbers were when they were chopped out of movies in the past.
So I'm wondering if that has changed the filmmaking process and made it simpler and less painful to cut a big scene. I suspect Meehan's answer would have been that it would have been more painful but they still would have made the same decision, and that's probably so. But it may matter with close judgment calls and it may even be that some studios tell the producers or directors, "Remember…we want a few deleted scenes to include on the DVD," thereby freeing the makers to go ahead and shoot scenes they think might not make it in. Has anyone seen any director or producer say this was the case?