Coming soon: There Will Be More Blood
There Will Be Blood was released in the UK in January, won a brace of Oscars in February and was gone from most cinema screens by the end of March. But the red stuff continues to flow. Early next week we'll be running an exclusive deleted scene from Paul Thomas Anderson's oil epic, one that will presumably add further texture to an already robust and complex narrative.
Then again, perhaps it won't. Frankly, I remain a little agnostic about deleted scenes. Yes, I like the idea that there are missing links that we are now able to investigate. And yes, I can see how these context-free off-cuts can shed light on the creative process and all that jazz. And yet for all that, it's hard to shake the feeling that deleted scenes are deleted for a reason (namely, that they are extraneous; a distraction).
Sometimes you can simply have too much of a good thing. All films - the good, the bad and the ugly - inevitably carry a little fat into the editing process. All usually play better when they reach their final fighting weight. Can anyone seriously claim that the bloated Apocalypse Now Redux is an improvement on the 1979 original? By the same token I've never been convinced that the 312-minute Fanny and Alexander is actually a more successful, satisfying picture that the abridged 188-minute version that played in cinemas.
Naturally an appetite for deleted scenes and directors' cuts stems from an interest in the films themselves and is facilitated by the rise of DVD. But what if this were just the beginning? What if everything that is deleted were later born anew - unearthed and recycled and milked for all its worth?
Here at work, many journalists write on an editorial program called CopyDesk, which preserves every single draft of an article in progress. This raises the possibility that these drafts will all, one day, be provided as enticing extras to amuse and delight the casual reader. How wonderful that would be. For instance, in an earlier draft of this very paragraph (written just 10-seconds ago) I wrote "the office" instead of "work", and "amaze" instead of "amuse". Do you see what a different complexion that gives the piece? A tantalising glimpse of a world that might have been.
So anyhow, I remain stuck with my agnosticism and am eager to be converted. What's your view of deleted scenes? What are the best ones and what are the worst ones? Are they a bad thing, or a not-bad thing; a harmless frippery or a valuable resource? Do you tremble with anticipation on discovering that the DVD of National Treasure 2 contains a bundle of "added features"? Or is it like opening a bushel of wheat and discovering it comes with a super-special added bonus called chaff?
