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On Veteran's Day, November 11, 2004, I got into the
patriotic spirit by watching the movie Saving Private
Ryan. This movie, with all its crude language and
graphic violence during war time, was unedited.
Incidentally, during the last part of the film, I adjusted
my preferences on the TV so that close captioning would
reveal what was being said by the Nazi Soldier who drives a
knife into Private Mellish during hand to hand combat¶I
visited a newsgroup <news://misc.writing.screenplays > and decided to put the
question to the hundreds of readers that voice their
opinions about film related topics¶Although I remember
asking the same thing years ago, this time I got a reply.
"Resistance is futile, shhhh." I had seen another movie on
DVD as well as the edited version on VHS before I learned
that 8MM would air on the network TV channel 9. I
decided to watch this movie again for old time`s sake. I sat
through two hours bugger-eyed watching how mercilessly
8MM was butchered, blurred, overdubbed and completely
altered. How does a TV network get away with that? Who is
behind the editing table? Do directors, before canning a
film, make their own instructions on what could or shouldn't
be edited out for airing on television? I`m not going to
flip over backwards trying to get the dirt about the
executive decision makers at KCAL for one silly film. I also
put this question to MWS to see if anyone knew whether
8MM was making its premier TV appearance. I thought
the movie was difficult to follow. Not only was conviction
hard to believe, but I lacked motivation to sit through all
two hours knowing that commercial breaks would be replacing
omitted scene¶Silencers and gun scenes snipped away,
total strangers coming into the picture with no directive,
no objective and Tom Welles, a family-first-man detective
portrayed as a sane human being with moral issues. Honestly,
it certainly takes a hack to do to 8MM what the
network censors did¶Nobody at MWS seemed to know
whether 8MM made its TV debut in 2004. Most anybody
concerned wanted to know about TV in America and whether
movies ever get aired uncensored (ie. after hours
2:00am)¶Admittedly, watching TV premiers containing
Catherine Keener, and addressing the controversial roll of
censors, makes writing an unbiased review challenging. On
the DVD, the director comments on the biggest risk the film
took omitting the background music as Tom enters George
Higgins` house, AKA "Machine". The whole business of
screenwriting seems to have become a joke that writers
should attempt a script aware that the FCC is going to
overdub all the strong language. In Sixth Sense, Cole
has a line following a curse word in a conversation with
Malcolm, a snafu in the making by censors. Cole says 'You
said the "s" word' which totally distorts any meaning to
their conversation as we know it¶Compared to HBO`s
Pornucopia, the networks really don`t air anything
worth sitting through a ton of bad music and bad jokes just
for a bit of eye candy¶I check my TV Guide for
performers scheduled on the late show, but even the most
devoted rock music lover will find themselves dozing to Dave
and Leno`s bad jokes¶I was perplexed by Full
frontal. I managed to see that film on IFC and Starz. I
still don`t get who the murderer really is,
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even after watching it several times. I started to
scrutinize street scenes, identifying billboards, for some
clue as to a time frame, but really I just wanted to burn
into memory Lee`s frustration in front of Red cafe in Los
Angeles¶Not all networks edit the same movie the same
way. I`ll certainly tune in again for every other network`s
rendition of 8MM because Catherine Keener is one of
my favorite stars. Next year I`ll be keeping a look out for
billboards on movies like The interpreter and The
ballad of Jack and Rose which I expect will open its
doors in Spring. I`ll even see movies like Friends with
money if I thought Catherine would be in it. I`m
optimistic that these films scheduled for Oscar season will
be beneficial to her fan`s piece of mind¶Just goes to
show you even CEOs and VIPs can be black listed. The amount
of voice over editing a Catherine Keener film might require
for TV may even start a movement in the movie review field.
Cringing at the network habit of scrolling skewed movie
credits to make screen space for previews of what's next may
become blasé. That only a cat could read such
scrolling credits off the screen proves networks messing
with films to comply with FCC stipulations hasn`t gone
unnoticed. In order to compensate for hack edit jobs that
likely exclude members of the cast, politically correct
networks` viewpoint of these issues speak for themselves,
not to mention risiduals I`m certain get shuffled under
fiduciary holdbacks. If I watch a movie on TV and I want to
find the name of the waitress in The butterfly
effect, I can`t without my cat as interpreter¶I
hope MWS sticks around until cities with industry leadership
in film productivity recognize that the process of which
scripts undergo stand as a learnt writing technique. I`m
also hopeful network sponsors realize their ads take
advantage of films containing art in good taste by selling a
product using modern methods (skin) and using the time
edited out from "risque" scenes¶People thought I was
crazy going Off Topic about ligatures of "ks", or "x"
conspiracies. That`s the impression I got. How anybody could
butcher Passion of the Christ any more than the graphic
scenes already depict is probably one for the history books.
I expect that film will get edited beyond belief whenever it
gets its TV premier, but maybe Easter Sunday might be an
exception. I`m not interested in maintaining an heuristic
existence under the conditions imposed by regulators because
in the end the secrecy among acquaintences
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