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Still, all the planning in the world can be shot to smithereens once the director goes out on the set. "Sometimes there are surprises, even if the studio has been in on a script and seeing dailies," says Gary Foster, who worked with directors Ron Shelton (Tin Cup) and Sidney Lumet (Gloria), both of whom had final cut. "You don't necessarily know what happened in the editing room. I've been in a situation where the studio sees it and says, 'Uh, what happened?'" (Occasionally, the director isn't sure himself. Richard LaGravenese, who cowrote the screenplay for The Horse Whisperer, watched Robert Redford's final cut log in at 2 hours and 44 minutes. "We tried to condense the script," he says. While Redford made cuts, "the movie was still long. It wasn't intentional, but it was necessary.")

If a director and studio can't agree to disagree, a producer can sometimes save the day--or at least some relationships. Foster, who calls himself "a diplomat with an opinion," says, "the key is never making a director feel attacked, because they'll go into their cave of an editing room and say 'F--- you.'" One producer skilled in such negotiations recalls working with a director who had final cut and a studio that felt reshoots were needed to make the movie coherent. "That was tough. No director wants to feel his movie can't be fixed in the editing room, so we had to be very careful to make it feel like it was his idea."

"It's not that you want to cut the film, because if you get to that point, you've won the battle but lost the war," says a studio executive. "But if you have final cut, you have a seat at the table."

And even if you don't, good manners still count. "At the end of the day," says De Luca "you've agreed to honor the filmmaker. You bought into it, you have to live with it."


Posted Dec 04, 1998 | Published in issue #461 Dec 04, 1998 | Order Article Reprints
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