The DVD Blend: Dynamic Deletion

One of my favorite elements of DVD used to be deleted scenes. I enjoyed watching what didn’t make it into the movie. What other ideas did the storyteller have? What was filmed but just didn’t work? If pacing wasn’t an issue, what would we have gotten to see? Not having deleted scenes on a disc seemed more like a slight than a sign that the movie played out exactly as planned, and I tended to be bothered by their absence.

All of that changed when I heard a comment from Frank Darabont that likened showing deleted scenes to showing your dirty underwear in public. I suppose, in Darabont’s eyes, deleted scenes shouldn’t be shown, because they were something private for the filmmaker. Their existence is a reminder of an element of failure in the director’s process, whether it was the actual execution of the scene or how that scene meshed with other parts of the movie. Sometimes redundant or contrary or useless, I could understand why Darabont felt that way.

That’s not to say I still haven’t found deleted scenes that I enjoy or wish were inserted back into the movie. Disney’s Pocahontas has a deleted musical number that completes the movie in an area I’d always complained about, gelling the relationship between John Smith and the heroine. Fortunately they’ve recognized that and put it back into the movie in one of the movie’s DVD releases. M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable has a killer conversation between Bruce Willis’s David and a priest that really has an impact that sticks with me. Even Darabont has conceded and had deleted footage on some of his releases, with a visual image in his adaptation of The Mist that had really stuck in my head when I read the original story and made me smile to see realized on film, even if it wasn’t in the final cut.

Deleted Scenes From Dynamic Stories: Canon or Careless?

No, I still find deleted scenes that I enjoy, even if I do kind of agree with Darabont’s stance on the subject. Recently, however, I’ve started finding myself bothered by the inclusion of deleted scenes on some DVD releases - primarily those of dynamic shows like Lost or Battlestar Galactica. If the show is ongoing, I suddenly find myself wondering if any of the deleted footage should be paid attention to, or just ignored.

Let me clarify that statement. No, I’m not some dunderhead who doesn’t know how to distinguish between what I see within an episode and what I see in deleted footage. There are lots of reasons for deleted footage however. Sometimes scenes are cut because they were poorly executed. Other times they slow down the pacing - although that’s typically more in movies; on television it’s more because they needed to slim down to make room for advertisements during the act breaks. Sometimes, rarely, footage is filmed and suddenly the writers or directors decide to take the story in a separate direction. Unfortunately, most of the television sets I’ve seen tend not to explain why deleted footage is deleted. It’s just there, and I wonder if it’s important.

Now, I’m not talking about misdirection, alternate footage, like Lost Season 4’s alternate, “who’s in the casket” footage offering alternate twists to the season’s end. Only one person was ever intended to be in that casket, and if there was any doubt to that, only two episodes in to the new season sort of clarified who was dead and why. But what about Battlestar Galactica’s fake-Athena from the Season 4 episode “The Hub?” In the episode itself, she was sort of abandoned; just left behind. A deleted scene on the DVD release shows her gunned down. Should we assume she now died off camera, or is the deleted scene just there to show us what might have been, but otherwise useless?

I still love to see deleted footage, but when we see it on ongoing stories, I have to wonder why it was cut, or whether we should take it as being just as “official” as what we see in an episode. If it’s not “official,” is it responsible to reveal it to fans before the story is over? Could fake-Athena have been left alive in “The Hub” because she has an important part to play later on? If so, isn’t that a hint now that we know at one point they were killing her? Maybe we never should have seen that alternate take until the series is over with. Heck, then studios could have an excuse to double-dip television releases the way they do movies.

Trying to decide whether deleted material should be considered official might seem a little silly, and it could probably drive an unreasonable person mad. I won’t deny I’ve scoured over deleted footage in the past on shows like these to see if they hid some key secret to uncovering the mysteries of the story. Having found no mysteries there, I realized that deleted scenes really are kind of like dirty laundry. Storytellers treat their secrets like valuables and keep them in vaults, not laundry baskets. But there’s that nagging thought that some small valuable might have been left in a pocket somewhere that keeps me looking… at least until the story has been told in its completion.