Posted on 08/10/2009 1:19:55 AM PDT by DemforBush
Hollywood test audiences are always giving low ratings to movies with depressing endings, sending them back to the editing room for a little “cheering up.” But it’s not just the grainy independent films about forbidden romances and snooty aristocracies that get recalled. Some of Tinseltown’s biggest blockbusters got a heavy dose of Paxil...
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.static.mentalfloss.com ...
COOL. Thanks.
BFLR.
I read that while they were filming Casablanca they hardly knew from one day to the next what was going to happen. They had about four alternatives for the ending but, luckily, stopped at the first one shot.
That wasn’t so much viewer testing as screenwriting by committee. And the result was close to miraculous.
“Luke’s father is Chewbacca!”
Bookmark for later - Thanks
The Fatal Attracting alternate is included in the DVD with extras. Glen Close slits her own throat. Pretty cool. But I agreed with the director on that one- he realised after the test screenings that the audience really wanted to see some retribution meted out on Close’s character and the audience also wanted it to be Anne Archer’s character to participate in that revenge (because of what she suffered in the film).
I think most authors probably write not just different endings but completely different scenes (and sometimes even different story lines). It would be kind of cool to see all the ‘sketches’ writers make of their characters and the different things those characters did on paper that you never got to see. Of course, it would also change the way you viewed the character forever.
“Brazil”
Blade Runner ...
I thought deleting the concentration-camp scene from “The Sound of Music” probably WAS a good call, after all.
Flesh and Bone (1993)
You guys may already know this, but the first choice for the role of Rick was not Bogart but George Raft. (Don’t think that would have worked)
Also, there was scuttlebutt in the mid-90s of plans for an updated remake of Casablanca, with Bogey’s part played by - I *bleep* you not - Sean Penn.
The alternate ending for “It’s a Wonderful Life”
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4267/saturday-night-live-its-a-wonderful-life-lost-ending
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