Alternate cuts

You know, wanting to... It's only subtle, but he makes it. Well, he got paid more than Aliens just for them to use his face. You know, the sort of digital little face they have very much in a theatrical cut to sort of condense this opening. I think fundamentally they should have come up with a cleverer way of separating Ripley off, and they could have done. Indeed, the author of the novelisation did that. He kept Newt alive but separated them. I don't know how he did it, but...

11:14 · jump to transcript →

late 90s there was a vhs work print going around of alien 3 which had a lot of these scenes in it and some of those scenes in that extended cut on the work print aren't in this because this is just a vhs copy of a of a print and that was all the talk was like oh my god how we get to see this you can find it on archive.org the work print um but seeing you know alien 3 and it's as close to it gets close to david fincher's

43:34 · jump to transcript →

kind of vision, or I think the script Charles de la Zurica had kind of worked from. It made me appreciate the film more, I think, in its current state, in its extended cut. The theatrical cut I felt was, you know, when you sort of compare the two, it's missing a lot of stuff. But it's stuff they left out of the theatrical cut in this cut. So there's kind of, I think maybe for some fans, there was still like a...

44:00 · jump to transcript →

And we actually painted the zigzag of tire tread on his face, buried him. Buried him and had him come up. And it was an elaborate gag and it took us like four hours. And it was very funny, like the truck ran over him. And for some reason, the executives at Trimark said, no, that's too cartoony. Oh, really? Let's cut it out. And of course, now I think these are the things that we should go do the director's cut and put back in. But it was in one of my first cuts. But yeah.

33:39 · jump to transcript →

which actually, and I don't know if I mentioned early on, I mentioned it somewhere, that we had to actually, we got a PG-13 by the ratings board when we, the final cut, or one of the cuts, and we had to go in and add two more fucks for Jennifer actually said, leave us the fuck alone or something, and that gave us the R because the picture was really, you know, wasn't, you know,

44:58 · jump to transcript →

But in retrospect, I think we should have put that comedy back in. But hopefully, maybe someday a director's cut. And there's our set of colors, and this was all built in a soundstage. And... It'd be a pretty strange sight to come home to. Yes. Thrashed, but organized. I think something got in here.

47:37 · jump to transcript →

Tony Scott

and stops him from killing her to check himself out in the mirror, which gives her a moment to get her jump on him. The actual killing of Virgil was something that in my cut, the director's cut, is a little longer, a little more violent. I just, I felt justified in giving this end of the scene this amount of violence and passion because

1:22:38 · jump to transcript →

Tony Scott

...on Bronson whilst he's waiting and prepping for Clowns in Alabama to arrive. Which is brilliant. It's very, very funny. It just, when my final cut, it felt a little bit too long. So that's why I took it out. But if you've got the DVD, you can see it. The scene in the elevator, I think, is also... ...one of the great scenes in the movie. And really the tone of the scene...

1:34:44 · jump to transcript →

And now comes for a little bit of an inside situation. I cast for Radek, the Russian general here, Jürgen Prochnow. He's the star from Das Boot. Your old friend. Yeah, and I think if you have not yet bought Das Boot, you should do it now. Especially the new director's cut. Yeah, especially the new director's cut is very, very good. So here's Jürgen, and they get him out, and...

4:40 · jump to transcript →

They also did the amazing job on this boat, the director's cut sound-wise with a complete new sound. And here they were involved in every aspect of the sound also. No, they are doing amazing things and working on these gunshots and make them all sound so powerful and real at the same time. But they always add a little bit to it so that it goes a little bit beyond the real reality. But it doesn't take you out. It is still a gunshot, but it just sounds so much more

1:14:54 · jump to transcript →

big or became big, like Bill Paxton and Rick Rosovich and people like that, who don't necessarily have a ton of dialogue and, you know, or a ton of character stuff and, you know, we've both kind of theorized, like, did they have more stuff that didn't make it into the final cut? And I'm not sure, but it's certainly possible. I would sort of assume that they did. I mean, when I hear the stories about them shooting, it's always about the whole group of guys and Rick Rosovich did this and Bill Paxton did this and, you know, like, they were all equally involved and I guess just, you know,

21:36 · jump to transcript →

So these in this extended cut, I do think you get a better sense of who these characters are. I think one of the problems with the film is that, by the time the third act is coming around, you see a lot of bald-headed guys getting killed. But they're fun characters. They each did have an identity. And particularly, I think, Golic. The little crazy guy got some of his stuff excised a little bit much. The little crazy guy got some of his stuff excised a little bit much. When he releases the creature, you see that he's nuts. And his experience in meeting the creature, he has sort of interpreted it a little differently than someone who's not quite as bent might, and so therefore he feels it's his duty to release the creature. Sort of like a Renfield and Dracula kind of relationship, which I thought was interesting. And it added a little bit of clarity to this whole scene here. This is, again... Look how beautifully this stuff is shot. Fincher was very much into these browns and sepias. Well, the alien in Alien³ was still more of the blackish... The black, black alien. But because of the lighting and the color timing and so on, he does pick up this sort of overall sepia tone of the color scheme of the film. Whereas in the second film, even though there were browns in the body of the alien, there was a lot of blue light that was being used, and that reflects off the glistening slime. So they feel more blue-black. And this one feels a little more sepia. And actually, in Giger's work, if you look through Necronomicon, you really do see two different tones. You can see the blue-black and the brown-black. And so we opted more towards the brown-black. And, again, every one of these films... What's great about the Alien series is that every one of the films has the stamp of each director on it. No matter how you interpret that, or whether you like that or not, each movie is stylistically its own film. All owing to the original, but still maintaining some of its own quality.

1:28:41 · jump to transcript →

I like that he sticks to the script and Wesley's going crazy, but you're still getting the information. And it kind of works, and it kind of works in the final cut. It works because in a way he's obviously not used to dealing with anyone like this. This is a little bit of over art direction on my part. No, you need it.

1:07:46 · jump to transcript →

Wow. Oh, and then she designed it, too. No, it's the prototype for Robo's flight pack. The funding ran out before we got a chance to test it. How do you know so much about it? Oh, I designed it. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, it looks like the odds on the home team. Yeah, just cut that out. Let's just cut that. Let's do the director's cut, like, verbally. Okay, cut that part out. Here, I'll make notes so that we can go back and... But I mean...

1:03:00 · jump to transcript →

It was a bit longer, this scene. - We had an additional hole. Exactly, an additional hole. You can see something strange on the hole, because... You can see something strange, because he's grabbed by the feet by the alien through a hole which doesn't exist here. He had to walk for an additional 10m or something to get there. It was too long. That was one of the remarks we had from the first test screening. They made, if I remember, something like 100 remarks. I remember, sometimes we were defiant, but we were pretty upset. And sometimes we said "They're right." And sometimes we said "They're right." We were very upset at first, but looking at the questions which were asked, we realized that, each time, it was somewhere where... we thought it could go like that. In the time we had for doing it, we thought it was OK. As we could have more time, that was... Most of the notes, we found an answer. We never really followed the propositions we had, but we found the creative answer to the question asked. I think that was what the studio was waiting for us to do. But it was a good lesson for me and for us. Since that time, for each film I'm cutting I'm organizing previews, which is not in the French tradition. For Amélie we did some test screenings. In fact, I copy the answer from Hollywood, but the big difference is: I have the final cut, I can choose. The difference is on the use you do from the answers. Exactly. But we don't have to complain. - I love this idea. This is a simple shot that was hard. That head was long and heavy, and trying to keep it smooth and even and not drag across Michael's face, and make it all the way up to that opening in the chest. You always said that this cut, the final cut, was your cut. We did it with the production notes and... If the studio would ask me to make a director's cut, I would say "That's mine." Yeah, that would be a problem, because we're very happy with what we have.

48:31 · jump to transcript →

Taylor Hackford

And Mary Ann, who's innocent, just like she was in the beginning... ...she's right alongside. What I wanted to do at the end of this film, and that's why at this point... ...you see Neal Jones morph into Al Pacino... ...you realize you can't beat the devil every time. You might win one battle, but he's back there the next morning. I would not leave this film with you having a happy ending. I did that with Officer and a Gentleman. I want to basically say: Every single day of your life you can't get smug... ...and you have to confront morality. I think we all do. And that's why this is a moral tale. I'm not deeply religious and I don't think of this as a religious film... ...but I do think that it is a film of somebody who still feels... ...a certain idealism, and a realization that we have responsibilities in our life. And I think that all the people that worked on the film worked on it... ...in a fairly righteous way. You know, Andrew Neiderman wrote a novel at the beginning. Four writers contributed to the screenplay. And I want to mention the people I haven't mentioned. There's Mark Warner... ...who is my collaborator, my editor, fabulous collaborator through... ...this process. You can feel the pace of this film. Everybody put themselves into something here. I also want to give credit to Per Hallberg, who was the sound designer. All the way through this I think there are subtle effects in addition to the score... ...that really give you the feeling that there is something else going on. There are a lot of artists that worked on this film, and when you go through... ...the process of collaboration, you have a vision as a film maker... ...and you want to get that vision on the screen. But you can't do it alone. I know it's trite to say this, but you utilize... ...and when someone has a great idea, you grab it. I encourage that, and I worked with a wonderful group of collaborators... ...on this film, and I'm very proud of it. After having gone and talked for two hours here, almost nonstop... ...this must be a lot of dribble. I apologize if, in fact, it's gone on... ...ad nauseam, but, again, we had an opportunity to make a film. I appreciate Warner Bros. was very tough to work for. We had a lot of disagreements, but they did allow me to make a film... ...and, they did, ultimately, give me final cut of the film... ...so that I was able to make the film I wanted. No excuses. I'm very proud of it. I hope you enjoyed it. Subtitles conformed by SOFTITLER

2:17:38 · jump to transcript →