off the cutting room floor and onto yer YouTubes
June 10, 2012 12:06 AM   Subscribe

 
I'LL WATCH ANYTHING THAT MOVES!
posted by infinitewindow at 12:17 AM on June 10, 2012 [10 favorites]


Rebel archivists, archive this now.
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:30 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


I really couldn't watch more than ten minutes without risking my fragile grip on happiness. But what I saw reinforces that those damned trees are up to no good. And that Lynch likes breasts, but we knew that.
posted by longsleeves at 12:43 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


given that Blue Velvet is pretty much a perfect movie as is, I don't see how this could improve on things.
posted by philip-random at 12:59 AM on June 10, 2012 [2 favorites]


...wow! that was a treat. Its almost another film in its self.
Well worth every minute!
posted by quazichimp at 1:27 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Wow, finally realized why the movie is named Blue Velvet. Great scenes. Only in Lynch's mind would a club have a maitre d, be decorated with neon beer signs on and have a stage show featuring a dog eating out of a green bowl.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:31 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


given that Blue Velvet is pretty much a perfect movie as is, I don't see how this could improve on things.

Since these didn't make the final cut, we can presume that Lynch also thought they wouldn't improve things. But I don't think people view deleted scenes as a way to "improve" their experience of a movie, I think it's often more like it's just, you know, interesting for people to see what got cut.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 1:33 AM on June 10, 2012 [6 favorites]


a stage show featuring a dog eating out of a green bowl.

Also the proverbial chicken and egg.
posted by daniel_charms at 1:57 AM on June 10, 2012


flapjax:

One reason may be that many times the scenes are deleted not by the director but by the studio and upper management, sometimes for shitty reasons.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 2:19 AM on June 10, 2012 [2 favorites]


Entirely possible and/or probable, for sure, Joseph. No doubt.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 2:58 AM on June 10, 2012 [2 favorites]


How much darker could this movie have been....? Also, it seems to shed some light on Jeffery. I am only part way in but this is a great find.
posted by caddis at 3:55 AM on June 10, 2012


One reason may be that many times the scenes are deleted not by the director but by the studio and upper management, sometimes for shitty reasons.

"That's why I say you have to have final cut. That's the freedom to be able to work with your own intuitions." -David Lynch
posted by brevator at 3:58 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


My recollection is that Lynch was contractually obligated to deliver the film at a running time under two hours; legend has it that it's just one frame short of two hours. The rough cut was supposedly three and a half hours long. The Guardian has a nice piece about the rediscovery of this footage, including Lynch's reaction when it was found. As the article says, people have been looking around for this footage for years; the folks over at DVD Savant were included in one of those vault expeditions about ten years ago, resulting in this interesting writeup (still interesting, even though they didn't find much!)
posted by orthicon halo at 4:48 AM on June 10, 2012 [5 favorites]


WOW, I just watched Blue Velvet again the night before last, so I am freshly primed to dive into this pile of .. Lynch.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:52 AM on June 10, 2012


.
posted by coolxcool=rad at 5:03 AM on June 10, 2012


Someone really needs to edit these back into the final version somehow.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:22 AM on June 10, 2012


I remember being introduced to Lynch & Blue Velvet (& so much more) by BBC2.

It was Howard Schulman's Moving Pictures, or maybe Alex Cox's Moviedrome. Sigh.

If anybody could provide links to clips of either of those I might just go back to bed.
posted by n o i s e s at 5:34 AM on June 10, 2012


Lynch likes breasts

Are there many mammals that don't?
posted by fairmettle at 5:44 AM on June 10, 2012 [4 favorites]


The dog eating dog food!
posted by nathancaswell at 5:47 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Neat. I haven't seen the film in many, many years, but this makes me think I should rewatch it.
posted by Forktine at 6:19 AM on June 10, 2012


This would be a good one to watch for in a theatrical retrospective.
posted by sammyo at 6:28 AM on June 10, 2012


Don't hold your breath. From the Guardian story:

"Clearly it's Blue Velvet: The Director's Cut that the diehards want to see. But Lynch never revises his work. What's more, unlike, say, Ridley Scott on Blade Runner, he had the final cut on Blue Velvet (in return for halving his salary and the budget). So Lynch politely declined the opportunity re-edit the movie with the new footage ..."
posted by pmurray63 at 6:47 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


legend has it that it's just one frame short of two hours.

I'm not sure why, but this reminds of the time I rented "Mulholland Drive" on DVD, and discovered, as I was attempting to locate where my previous viewing session had ended, that entire film comprised a single chapter with respect to the disk indexing.
posted by hwestiii at 6:51 AM on June 10, 2012


Some (or all) of this material is on the Blu-Ray release. If you don't intend to buy or rent that, I'd watch this video soonest, is all I'm saying.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:55 AM on June 10, 2012


While it's interesting to see some of the back story that was cut out, I really think the film as released is better than a full cut with all these scenes put back in would be. It's much tighter and I think has a greater sense of mystery.
posted by localroger at 7:31 AM on June 10, 2012


> While it's interesting to see some of the back story that was cut out, I really think the film as released is better than a full cut with all these scenes put back in would be.

Can anyone possibly doubt this? Lynch had final cut and has made it clear he thinks it's fine the way it is, and it's hard to disagree.
posted by languagehat at 8:39 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


hwestiii: "I'm not sure why, but this reminds of the time I rented 'Mulholland Drive' on DVD, and discovered, as I was attempting to locate where my previous viewing session had ended, that entire film comprised a single chapter with respect to the disk indexing."

The rumor I've heard about that is that the surprisingly conservative Lynch didn't want people just skipping forward to watch the lesbian sex scenes. But I'm not sure about that, just as I'm not sure why the surprisingly conservative Lynch would put lesbian sex scenes in a movie in the first place.
posted by koeselitz at 9:11 AM on June 10, 2012


koeselitz, I think that it was that he didn't want people sort of picking the lesbian sex scenes out of the movie in isolation from the rest of it. (I believe that there was some controversy at the time of the DVD release about his digitally blurring Laura Haring's genitals in one scene because he didn't want people doing screen grabs of it.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:46 AM on June 10, 2012


Lynch had final cut

Yes, but he also had to limit the movie's length as noted above. I wonder if he would have left so many scenes in the cutting room if his contract had permitted him to turn in a 3.5 hour movie. Lynch also seems rather pleased that the scenes were recovered and made available for people to see.
posted by localroger at 10:03 AM on June 10, 2012


Is the music finished or just a placeholder? Doesn't sound like Badalamenti.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:45 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Also interesting to see that there were a couple of pieces of rabbit/hound symbology in the deleted scenes. I can't remember; did any of that make it into the final cut?
posted by mr_roboto at 11:52 AM on June 10, 2012


As I've read, Lynch's concern about the sex scene being taken out of context was why he agreed to the blurring, but the single-chapter thing is his preference, and he's had to be talked out of it on many other DVD releases. Lynch believes strongly in a movie as a singular experience, and gets indignant about the idea that you can pick it apart into bits. Which is funny, given that film is an art form all about assembling little bits (shots) into a whole, but I dig what he means. A lot of Lynch's aesthetic, especially in Blue Velvet, has to do with a certain deliberate stiffness cumulatively turning genuinely eerie, and that's destroyed if you jump to your favorite bits--taken out of context, any moment in his movies can seem off in every possible regard, but put them together and magic happens.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 11:55 AM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


I have to believe a fan edit is inevitable. Get on it Internet hive mind!
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 12:43 PM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


So can anyone confirm if all of this footage is on the Blu-Ray release or not? The Amazon page says that it includes "newly discovered lost footage" but does it have the whole 52 mins?

I am totally fine with Lynch leaving the films the way he edited them, but I would love to see the deleted scenes from other movies, like the 3 hours cut from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. And although Lynch has disavowed it, I really love being able to watch the extended Alan Smithee cut of Dune.

Speaking of Mulholland Dr, sometimes I wonder which universe is better: the one we live in now where we got the film, or the parallel universe where it became a TV series like he'd originally planned.
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:57 PM on June 10, 2012


I still remember when Laura Dern's character made the tragedy mask face after the naked --not nude-- Isabelli Rosellinni's called Kyle McLachlan's her secret lover. What a powerful scene that was.
posted by y2karl at 1:05 PM on June 10, 2012 [2 favorites]


easily in the top ten of all time. reminds me of going back to renton (wa) to visit my folks.
posted by goutytophus at 1:42 PM on June 10, 2012



Speaking of Mulholland Dr, sometimes I wonder which universe is better: the one we live in now where we got the film, or the parallel universe where it became a TV series like he'd originally planned.


The TV show is much, much better in that other universe, but its existence caused a series of events culminating in the election of Sarah Palin as Supreme Kommandant of the United North American Union in 2010.

So, take your pick.
posted by the bricabrac man at 1:59 PM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Finally: Aunt Barbara gets all the screen time she deserves!
posted by Dr. Zira at 3:01 PM on June 10, 2012 [2 favorites]


What a powerful scene that was.

Oddly, that's one thing that might have been improved with the backstory; in the deleted scenes we find out who the guys in the car are and why Sandy's jilted ex is so pissed off; he had considered Jeffrey a friend. In the movie as released it's not quite clear where these guys came from or where they went after Dorothy showed up.

That said, it probably could have been done a little better without the large number of scenes used to establish that relationship in the deleted scenes collection.
posted by localroger at 4:09 PM on June 10, 2012


Speaking of Mulholland Dr, sometimes I wonder which universe is better: the one we live in now where we got the film, or the parallel universe where it became a TV series like he'd originally planned.

I suspect Naomi Watts prefers our universe. Laura Harring and Justin Theroux...?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:36 PM on June 10, 2012


The rumor I've heard about that is that the surprisingly conservative Lynch didn't want people just skipping forward to watch the lesbian sex scenes.

I believe he just doesn't want people watching his movies out of order. Sit down and watch it in a single sitting, is his point. Lesbians have nothing to do with it. I believe it's in his contract now that he decides if there are chapter stops or not.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 4:58 PM on June 10, 2012


Yes, Lynch has strong views about how films should be watched.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:19 PM on June 10, 2012


Megan Mullally!
posted by 41swans at 5:34 PM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


That's not "strong views", that's just common sense.
posted by the bricabrac man at 8:53 PM on June 10, 2012


I saw this movie in its original theatrical release. At that time I said "That was a great movie and I will never see it again." Now, many years later, I recall the movie only vaguely, but I'm going to trust my prior self.
posted by neuron at 10:45 PM on June 10, 2012


Megan Mullally!

Holy shit. I did not recognize her. But watching it again, her voice is unmistakable. Holy shit. Megan Mullally was almost in Blue Velvet.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:17 PM on June 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


flapjax: too much for a monday morning , man. now I'm all screwed up for the rest of the day. Wonderful!
posted by ouke at 2:15 AM on June 11, 2012


"That was a great movie and I will never see it again."

It was only on my third viewing that I figured out the real plot and wrapped up all the little strings that don't seem to make much sense on a shallow viewing.
posted by localroger at 5:26 AM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


...the surprisingly conservative Lynch didn't want people just skipping forward to watch the lesbian sex scenes.

The surprisingly un-conservative David Lynch eats a pair of (warm) panties for the camera (sfw).
posted by hubs at 11:44 AM on June 11, 2012


Just posting to say that this just got taken down by Fox.
posted by codacorolla at 10:22 AM on June 15, 2012




... I find this alternate video far more interesting and true to the spirit of the song than the much better known official video which was directed by Herb Ritts and therefore looks like a Calvin Klein commercial.


Look, I love David Lynch as much as any of us (and Wild at Heart is fantastic) but this right here is like a 3 shot performance intercut with footage from a movie. It's one step above a "comic book movie shots intercut with NBA highlights" promo.

The Herb Ritts vid looks like a Calvin Klein commercial, sure... but who cares? Would this song have registered to the extent it did without a half naked Helena Christensen rolling around in the surf and dreamboat footage of Chris Isaak floating through the clouds? Unlikely. They 100% made the right call. The Herb Ritts video is completely cemented as a "time and a place" memory in my childhood. That makes it great.
posted by nathancaswell at 11:00 AM on July 3, 2012


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