“The director’s cut is the film that’s released — unless it’s been taken away from the director by the financiers and the studio,” Scorsese said. “[The director] has made their decisions based on the process they were going through at the time. There could be money issues, there could be somebody that dies [while making] the picture, the studio changes heads, and the next person hates it. Sometimes [a director says], ‘I wish I could go back and put it all back together.’ All these things happen. But I do think once the die is cast, you have to go with it and say, ‘That’s the movie I made under those circumstances.’”
This was in response to Scorsese being asked about his four-hour cut of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” (Scorsese’s editor Thelma Schoomaker has spoken highly of it) which is the only director’s cut known to exist of any of Scorsese’s movies — although I bet that original cut of “Gangs of New York,” which was shown to a few journalists in 2001 including Hollywood-Elswhere’s Jeffrey Wells, must still be hidden in a vault somewhere.
About that ‘Gangs’ cut, Wells claimed that the behind-the-scenes battle between Scorsese and then Miramax head honcho Harvey Weinstein ended with “a polished, cleaned-up version of the ‘Gangs’ being released in December of 2002” and not the one he saw in 2001.
“The work-print version [I saw] is longer by roughly 20 minutes, and more filled out and expressive as a result, but that’s not the thing. The main distinction for me is that it’s plainer and therefore more cinematic, as it doesn’t use the narration track that, in my view, pollutes the official version. It also lacks a musical score, with only some drums and temp music.”
Wells added, “I don’t believe Scorsese for a second when he says the theatrical version coming out this Friday is the one that bears his personal stamp of preference. My guess is that Harvey’s mitts are all over this puppy. Scorsese may have his weaknesses or indulgences as a filmmaker, but he’s always let his films play at their own pace and allow them to be true to themselves — their own tempo, themes, moods. He’s used narration before, but never in such a way that the narration wound up feeling like an encumbrance. And he’s never been one to speed his films up when they weren’t working.”
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.