Botched!: Cruising & Thief and the Cobbler

[emcflat]

Hello one and all. My virgin post with this site so be gentle please and thank you. Most of you folks are a good bit farther along at this than me
but I have decided to throw my brain into the mix anyway.

Whaddya say let's talk about films that have been disatrously cut or taken from geniuses and made into trash or semi-trash. Two that come to mind are Friedkin's "Cruising" with Al Pacino and "the Thief & the Cobbler" by Richard Williams (also called Arabian Night). More obviously is Magnificent Ambersons.

Got any others? Supposedly there is a work-print of Cobbler bootlegged out there but I can't find it. These are the kind of movies that make the greatest and most important DVD studies in my opinion.

[cbernard]

Was Cruising cut for general release? It's not uncommon for a director to do a little trimming, but would you really say that the film was "butchered"? It's pretty strong as it is, in my opinion.

[DDillaman]

As it happens, I just read an interview from an old Sight and Sound (November 1998) with Friedkin about CRUISING, and he said that roughly 40 minutes were cut, and equated it to MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS in terms of scale and effect. Among other things, the entire original opening scene and some intensely hardcore scenes that I can't even imagine how anyone would think would have passed with less than an X, including

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golden showers and a "graphic (fisting) scene in which you could see a fist visible in somebody's stomach".

Sorry if anyone was just eating breakfast, hence the spoiler tags. Anyway, the article intimates that all the cuts were MPAA-requested, although the title card at the start was a response to potential outrage from gay groups.

I should really watch this movie at some point.

[GringoTex]

I understood that Friedkin attempted to accomodate some of these concerns but in the process I think he has botched the movie.

Gay critic Robin Wood wrote an excellent and highly sympathetic essay on the film in Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan that deals with its incoherence.

[THX1378]

I havn't seen the film in years. I rented once about 8 or 9 years ago to see what the fuss was all about. It did feel that the film was cut, like they wanted to show you more but couldn't because of the feared X rating. And I always hated the ending because-

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Karen Allen goes to Al Pacino's apartment and finds the leater jacket and hat leading you to belive that he's into the gay leather S&M scene now or it's just left over from him going undercover, you deside

As for Thief I don't think were ever going to see the version other than the workprint, unless someone or Miramax ponys up some money for Richard Williams to finsh the film.

[DDillaman]

To clarify, Friedkin doesn't think that his movie is in the league of AMBERSONS - just that the extent of damage to the final product was comparable in scope. (Exact quote, in response to the question "How much material did you lose?": "It was butchery on a scale comparable to THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS - we must have lost about 40 minutes of material.")

From that interview: "I don't think it totally works as a picture. I think the continuity is botched. I'm not crazy about all the casting and I don't think Pacino's is the performance of a guy with a deep understanding of his role." (He then goes on to say that it does stand out, nonetheless, because it makes people uncomfortable.)

[inri222]

Here is an interesting article about Cruising

[postmodern-chuck]

I've always thought of The Cabinet of Caligari as something of a botched masterpiece, if only because the filmmakers were strapped with a clunky framing device per the demands of the studio. For those who haven't seen it,

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the expressionist joyride turns into a lame dream sequence / fantasy that, in the end, undermines the film's intentions.

With this, a very surreal, nightmarish, anti-authoritarian masterpiece turns into a sort of cowardly lame duck -- and, according to some articles I've read, a precursor to Nazi Germany.

It's historically fascinating, but I've seen far better examples of early expressionism.

[Dylan]

In case anybody is interested, "Cruising" has been playing on IFC this month in OAR 1.85:1.

[Antoine Doinel]

In depth article on the butchering of The Thief And The Cobbler by Film Threat. Fascinating stuff.

[David Ehrenstein]

My two cents on Cruising

[inri222]

Another interesting article: Cruising: Re-examining the Reviled

[Scharphedin2]

Whaddya say let's talk about films that have been disatrously cut or taken from geniuses and made into trash or semi-trash... More obviously is Magnificent Ambersons.

Since Magnificent Ambersons was already mentioned, I could not help thinking of IT'S ALL TRUE, another film that was not so much botched, as completely erased from Welles' career.

Anxious to avoid Nazi influence in the South Americas in the time leading up to the United States' entry into World War II, the film was commisioned by the US government as part of a good neighbor policy toward Mexico and Brazil. Welles was singled out to helm the project, while he was still working on THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. The shooting of AMBERSONS barely completed, and with RKO's promise to send editing equipment and technicians to help Welles finish the film while working in Brazil, he packed up and went down to Sao Paulo to begin work on what never became IT'S ALL TRUE.

I recently viewed the Paramount DVD of the same title, which is a documentary by Richard Wilson (who was one of the technicias on the original project), Myron Meisel and Bill Krohn. What I had not expected was the inclusion in the documentary of a reconstruction of an entire narrative thread of the film. "Four Men On A Raft" would have constituted roughly one third of the finished film, and was the segment that Welles managed to complete most of, before the production of the project was shut down, and Welles himself fired from RKO. Apparently the footage was never edited, and sat in a vault for close to 50 years, before it was discovered, assembled and given a kind of release in the early '90s.

Although the segment (which runs about an hour) cannot be said to represent a real Welles film, it is still fascinating to watch. It would be interesting to know what kind of record existed in terms of the sound and editing -- as it is, the segment comes across more as a semi-fine cut than as a finished film. The pace and rhythm is not what one would expect from Welles, and some of the musical cues that have been added are distracting to say the least. Yet, in the way individual shots are composed and framed, the play of light and shadow in individual scenes, the many low angle shots, and extensive use of wide angle lenses, the material very clearly bears Orson Welles' signature. Most powerful is a scene of the inhabitants of a small fishing village burrying a young fisherman, who has drowned at sea. The long procession of grieving villagers are seen silhouetted against the sky, as they inch their way from the beach up to higher ground in order to complete the ritual of burial. Recalling the funeral procession in OTHELLO, it is easy to imagine the power of this scene, had Welles been able to complete it with his own sound.

Perhaps sadder than the mere fact of the incompletion of this film in itself, is the notion that this would have been such a different type of film for Welles. It would have been a film centered on a real love of humanity. The empathy that Welles felt towards the people he met and lived with in Brazil is very clear in the way he depicted them in the footage that survives, and it is an element that I do not believe is really present in any of the work that Welles did complete throughout his career.

[David Ehrenstein]

There's more material from the It's All True shoot that Bill and Myron and the UCLA film archives hope to edit in the near future.

[David Ehrenstein]

Well they didn't dump it all into the pacific ocean, as the partially reconstructed It's All True demonstrates. The second volume of Simon Callow's Welles biography has just come out in England and among other things it disputes the "own worst enemy" line, showing Welles to be constantly creative and productive come hell or high water.

[Scharphedin2]

There's more material from the It's All True shoot that Bill and Myron and the UCLA film archives hope to edit in the near future.

Are there any more details on this to be obtained anywhere? The technicolor footage included in the documentary certainly made me wish to see more, and the sequence with the christening of the animals that would have been included in a segment of the film directed by Norman Foster also looked very interesting. Is there any reason to hope that they may be able to recreate any of these other segments to the extent of "Four Men On A Raft"?

[David Ehrenstein]

No details at the moment.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Another interesting article

Cruising: Re-examining the Reviled

http://www.fringeunderground.com/cruising.html

This is a fascinating read. Many thanks.

I also think that Video Watchdog ran an article on the deleted scenes/subliminal footage in Cruising a few years ago. I'll see if I can find it.

[Lino]

Mark Kermode on Cruising:

For some years now, I've been attempting to get a documentary together which would include some of the long censored footage, of which Friedkin asserts there is "around forty minutes" including "my favourite scene I've ever shot" in which cop Joe Spinell and his partner beat each other around the buttocks with their truncheons while singing "I'm going to Kaaaansaas City" spread-eagled on the hood of a police car. "I loved that scene," Friedkin enthuses to this day, "but to the censors it was outrageous, a direct attack on authority, and it just had to come out in its entirety."

I hope he gets his wish.

[David Ehrenstein]

The novel Cruising, by Gerald Walker, is set in the NYC gay scene of the late 60s and early 70s, long before there was such a thing as a leather or S&M subculture

Complete bullshit!!!

[Narshty]

Got any others? Supposedly there is a work-print of Cobbler bootlegged out there but I can't find it. These are the kind of movies that make the greatest and most important DVD studies in my opinion.

It's on YouTube in about 17 chunks.

[Lino]

Cruising - Al Pacino Dancing in Leather Bar. Just what it says. You know you wanna see it.

[miless]

The novel Cruising, by Gerald Walker, is set in the NYC gay scene of the late 60s and early 70s, long before there was such a thing as a leather or S&M subculture

Complete bullshit!!!

yeah... have they ever seen Scorpio Rising?

[David Ehrenstein]

And not just that. The leather scene was well-documented for years both in pulp fiction and softcore porn. John Rechy's City of Night which deals with it in considerable detail was publihed in 1962.

What's truly egregious about Cruising is its pretense that the police knew nothing about the gay leather scene (save if they were clandestinely involved in it.) For decades the gay bars of New York were speakeasys owned by the Mafia, which paid protection money to the NYPD. When the money didn't come in on time bars were raided. A revolt against one such raid took place at a far from fashionable flea pit called The Stonewall Inn. Heard of it?

Walker's novel was inspired by a series of killign sin the West Village that the NYPD didn't give two shits about until gay liberation politicos began to complain. And even then their efforts were piss poor. The perp was never captured.

As for the rest of the story --

[Gordon]

I am in agreement with Glenn Erickson (DVD Savant) in his view that Sam Peckinpah's, Major Dundee was a botched masterpiece. Peckinpah still had a lot to learn in 1964 and the scope of this highly ambitious story by Harry Julian Fink is about as challenging as anything Peckinpah ever attempted in his career. The spectre of John Ford hangs over the film, but the discipline of Ford is sorely missing. The expanded 2005 version with a new, more appropriate, but uninspiring score by Christopher Caliendo allows the seriousness and energy of the visuals, performances and set-pieces to be revealed, where Daniele Amfitheatrof's melodramatic and overused original score simply destroyed much of the film's power. All of the additional scenes add more weight and continuity (narrative and emotional) to the story, though the scenes with Senta Berger still don't sit too well, I feel. Still far from greatness, but a fascinating and exilirating American Civil War era film.

Though I greatly admire and enjoy Huston's films, I feel that Moby Dick falls considerably short of greatness. One of the most powerful novels ever written, Melville's metaphysical parable is a dark odyssey that pursues the essence of the natural world in the form of a aggressive, seemingly omnipotent sperm whale. Peck tries his best and in and of itself, his performance is very good, full-blooded, but Ahab is character that perhaps cannot be portrayed by an actor, especially in Cinema, wihtout appearing hysterical, insane, silly or, if underplayed, as Peck attempt, simply driven, selfish. The famous speech to Starbuck is truncated to spare the average viewer the Kantian philosophical concepts and the truly blasphemous line that follows, "Talk not to me of blasphemy, man - I'd strike the sun if it insulted me": "For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines," and I've always found those words unusually powerful and I was disappointed that Huston left them out. The weight of Ahab's insight into the workings of the world is supposed to shake Starbuck'a faith and subdue his insubordination, but that cannot be the case in the film, as the full weight of Ahab's monologue is not presented and the conflict is weakened. Cinematically, technically, it is a triumph for a film from the mid-50s, with exquisite detail for the Pequod and the whale, with great action sequences, but that is not where the power of the story lies. A damn good film, I feel; I love the Saint Elmo's Fire sequence and the disturbing ending is brilliantly executed, but it lacks the enormous power of the novel, which is often the case with philosophical/metaphysical novels.