Director Ridley Scott says moviegoers are becoming savvy enough to second-guess filmmakers and that’s why deleted scenes, documentaries and unused endings are such popular DVD features.
”Audiences have now gotten into the editing room with filmmakers and stars,” said the director, who offers an extended ending to Thelma & Louise on a DVD of the film released on Tuesday. ”Now everybody’s interested in the process and so we have to say, ‘This is how we made it.”’
The British-born Scott, whose other credits include Gladiator, Alien and Black Hawk Down, said such curiosity is healthy but comes at a cost of dispelling some of the mystery of moviemaking.
”That makes it harder to scare people, harder to make people laugh because they’re familiar with all the tricks,” he said. The DVD of Thelma & Louise,” starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis as two lawless women on the run after killing a would-be rapist, includes 30 minutes of deleted material and a documentary with shots of an unreleased erotic romp between Davis and co-star Brad Pitt.
Before it reached theaters in 1991, the ending was shortened to avoid dwelling on the grim details of the tragic climax. While that version remains intact on the DVD, the disc includes the separate footage of the original cut, which Scott characterised as ”satisfying” but ”really depressing.”
Eleven years ago, Scott famously revised the studio version of his 1982 sci-fi noir Blade Runner to restore his original ending and make the plot more ambiguous, suggesting that the android-hunter played by Harrison Ford may be an android himself ‒ Sapa-AP