A friend of mine has a theory that pop songs should always be two and a half minutes at the longest, and movies should never run longer than an hour and a half. For the most part, I agree. Not that I would refuse to go see some sweeping three-hour epic, but let's just say I side with the people who think The Dark Knight could have used a trim or two.

Now editing grinches like me have targeted another movie, and the director may not go down without a fight. Apparently Paramount wants David Fincher to trim sections of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, based on audience reactions to the 20 minutes of the film shown at the Telluride Film Festival. And David Fincher, never a guy to take something sitting down, apparently took his next project to Sony in protest.

Kevin Eastman is working on an adaptation of Heavy Metal with Fincher, and FilmStalker reports Eastman's account of why he and Fincher moved their project from Paramount. "It was time for [Paramount] to make a decision and they were at odds with Fincher over another project, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, [because] they wanted him to reduce the running time… and so they said, 'Until you step up to do what we want you to do with Benjamin, we're not going to greenlight any other of [your] movies.' And David said, 'Fine, [expletive removed] you, I'm going to set up [Heavy Metal] somewhere else,' so we jumped over to Sony and set it up there."

Well, at least Fincher sticks to his word. Benjamin Button seems to have the potential to be something really great, and obviously it's a shame when a studio meddles with a director's vision. That hour-and-a-half rule can't really be applied to Benjamin Button-- it's clearly not that kind of movie-- but who knows if it might benefit from a little editing. It seems likely we'll see a shortened version, given the tendency of studios to wield the editing knife. Some of you may cry foul over a lost masterpiece, but I'll be intrigued to see what comes out of it.