CHAPTER FIFTEEN What You Didn't See So one day I went to the studio to see the edited film. It was just me sitting in a darkened room with the projector running, and this was even before the sound was looped, so I was watching what was basically a very talky silent - good thing I knew all the lines. It was my first intimation of any real trouble. The movie was just plain too long - over two and a half hours, if memory serves. Right off the bat, there is a eulogy scene at the end of the original that was cut: Reggie at Marc's graveside. The sound was never looped for that scene, so it isn't even on my director's cut tape (no, you may not have a copy). Roger later said he liked the way that left the ending open for interpretation, but I think that opinion goes under the heading of trying to put a positive spin on a bad situation. I hated it. (I've gone on at interminable length elsewhere about endings-that-are-not-endings) Marc is dead, okay? Dead, dead, dead. Glad to have finally gotten that off my chest, and to have ended any pointless debates that have doubtless been going on for the last thirteen years (oops - better batten down that Delusions of Grandeur filter).. In fact, the movie originally opened with that scene - with Reggie dragging Marc's body out the back of Nash's office: REGGIE (VO) It doesn't begin here. CAMERA PANS DOWN to closeup on license plates: they bear the current year. DISSOLVE TO: CLOSE SHOT of another license plate: the date is two years earlier. REGGIE (VO) It begins here. And then we would have proceeded to the first scene with Marc and his doomed friends. But that scene was cut by United. You see, the demo reel which they had wanted included had been placed at the chronologically correct point, about 45 minutes into the movie. United moved it into the very front, pre-credits position. This is why, at the very end of those opening credits, you see a door - it was supposed to dissolve into the door that was kicked open by Reggie. Roger also excised at least one other totally unnecessary scene, where Marc's doctor and her father act as clay pigeons to set up the final fight with Alfie by renting a cabin from villainous realtor Parker Nash during the time that Yog Kothag's cosmic timetable demanded a sacrifice. He then covered the transition with a driving scene, with two lines of dialogue taking the place of that scene - voila! Almost five minutes saved. There was also an entirely problematic situation going on with the distributors during the post-period; only years later, after everyone had kissed and made up and notes were compared, did we find out that we were sabotaged by Middlemen with an Agenda. Why, we will never know, but Roger was prevented from doing any further work on the final cut. United themselves scissored several other scenes, the first of which was the entire sequence concerning Marc & Reggie training at a karate dojo, filmed at a real dojo in a Houston suburb. Like so many of my other scenes, it was way too long and detailed - today, I would have found a simpler way to put out the same information. It's exclusion led to my moment of chagrin last time , when Reggie snaps the chain on the axe not by dint of training, but by apparently hulking out. Phoo. The karate shoot had another of my favorite examples of low-budget ingenuity: Roger wanted a dolly shot, and accomplished it simply by acquiring a shopping cart from the supermarket next door and sitting in it. Similarly deleted was another lengthy sequence where Marc & Reggie are accosted by a gang of street thugs after a late night movie. The thugs, of course, do not realize that they are picking on a couple of people who are training to be superheroes, and the predictable carnage ensues. Marc, in particular, is glad to finally be able to let off a little steam and nearly kills the leader. Also missing , therefore, is the scene afterwards where Marc deals with his emerging Warrior Self, and other Joseph Campbell crap I chose to throw in. Besides completely losing the mythic qualities of the script - which probably shouldn't have been in there anyway, so sue me - this segment was the last remaining vestige of what I considered an important subplot, which was Marc's (understandable) fear of the dark ever since the massacre. The rest of that got lost somewhere between my last draft and the shooting script. The movie segment would also have included my second appearance in the movie. The scene would have started with a shot of the movies marquee - Marc & Reggie had been watching Roger's first movie, The Jet Benny Show, incidentally - and panned down to them leaving the theater. I was one of the people leaving behind them. In particular, I was the guy in the beret shaking his head sadly. United made one more excision that was like a blow to me: it was a short bit of dialogue between Marc & Reggie, as they sit, back-to-back, awaiting the final fight with Alfie:   REGGIE Marc? MARC Hm? REGGIE This is it, huh? MARC Yeah. REGGIE Yeah. This is it. (Pause) I'm scared. MARC Me, too. We'd be idiots if we weren't. Pause. REGGIE Marc? MARC Hm? REGGIE I don't regret it. MARC Regret what?   REGGIE My time with you. Pause. MARC Thank you. REGGIE For what? MARC For not regretting it, I guess. Pause. They sit in silence, waiting.... That particular bit of dialogue had survived since FE's first incarnation as a short story, and I was quite fond of it; it presaged a later scene where Reggie refuses to let Marc go on a suicide mission to kill Nash simply because she loves him. That admission now, as does so much else, comes out of left field, with no foreshadowing. Additional foreshadowing was provided the fear-of-darkness scenes, mentioned as cut earlier - come on, if you've seen the movie, you noticed that, suddenly and without fanfare, Marc and Reggie are sleeping in the same bed. Reggie had more time to deal with the post-traumatic stress of her massacre. Helping Marc deal with his was therapy for her, too. I'd be able to write that better, today - it was pretty clumsy in the script as filmed. Not that you'll ever see those scenes. The script wasn't the only thing that got chopped either - the distributor didn't like the music track, provided by Houston musician Marianne Pendino and stripped it out (though she was still credited on the original video box), and replaced it with one from their house composer. Then they remixed the sound, which somehow resulted in squashing the EQ, muting the effects track and rendering the voice track ever so slightly out of sync, murdering the sound track we had labored on for so long... but that is a tale for next time. NEXT: The Art of Noise