The ‘Benjamin Button is too long’ meme begins
All it took is one clown spouting off about a friggin’ test screening at AICN and suddenly the idea that David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is too long is on its way to becoming conventional wisdom.
Next Anne Thompson rings in. I don’t know if she’s referring to the AICN piece which had the runtime pegged at 3 hours or another source, but she off handedly claims the cut Fincher turned in was “quite long.”
Next, /Film refers to the AICN and Thompson pieces and concludes ominously “There is a bigger story going on behind the scenes…” What? Really? Care to elaborate on that? No? I didn’t think so.
Finally, Vulture refers to all three pieces and asks the burning question, “does this movie need to be three hours long?”
Yes, apparently it does so shut your pie hole and deal with it. What a bunch of short attention span babies. If the movie is great, 3 hours is nothing, but people are already lining up to torpedo the film after one anonymous screening.
Instead of sitting around passing along back fence gossip, how about giving the artist the benefit of a doubt?
Sometimes I hate the Internet.
Filed under: Buzz, Opinion
Tags: Brad Pitt, David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
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I heard the first cut was six weeks long.
What’s the big deal?
A lot of long movies would so much cuter with studio amputations.
War and Peas
Se7en Samurai
Calypso Now Redux
Larry of Arabia
Das Boo!
Dr. Zhi
I can’t wait to see the Curious Case of Ben’s Butt
I’ve never understood audience aprehension towards long movies. I get why studios want them shorter, more showings in a day, but why the hell would the audience want less bang for their buck? Tell me if this statement makes sense: “Listen here, I paid ten dollars for my ticket, so I better be able to leave this room as soon as humanly possible.”
It’s part of the reason Che is still without a distributor. “Wait, Steven, your movie is over 4 hours?!” Yeah, deal with it. Some movies need to be long. So what? I don’t get it. I love good 90 minute movies. I also love good 190 minute movies.
Alynch, exactly. I understand the marketing stooges and bean counters crying about the length, but none of these writers represent those people.
And it’s irritating that this seems to be blowing up into a ‘thing” over relatively nothing. I suspect we haven’t heard the last of it.
Ari I think it’s probably true that some movies are longer than they need to be, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest Che and Button are just fine. Even if they’re not, I’m not taking the word of a test screener.
Has anyone ever been to one of those? They’re lame. The music tracks are often temporary, the sound hasn’t been mastered properly and special effects are often missing. They’re the worst way to see a movie.
Hear, hear.
I did see an early cut of TRAFFIC and when I interviewed Soderbergh, we talked about scenes that felt truncated, which he did alter. I guess you could say I guided Steve through the process. But no award for moi.
I hope Fincher sticks to his guns about this. I hope it doesn’t get cut.
Could you imagine a cut version of THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD?
How about a 2 hour version of GONE WITH THE WIND or SEVEN SAMURAI?
Hell, people lined up for the 3 hour 15 minute TITANIC in droves.
If anyone is daunted by the 3 hour running time…they probably wouldn’t like the film in any form anyway.
Supposedly the original cut of Jesse James WAS much longer, but the studio wasn’t happy and it was cut down. One thing I do know: nothing good will ever come of an AICN user review. Talk about ridiculous.
I don’t have much hope of Button making money regardless of length, though I’d naturally be happy if it did. What I do hope is that like Jesse James this will be a cinephile’s film. One of those rare treats of a beautfilly made art film that makes the most of a generous budget.
BTW, those titles were hilarious Ryan!
Let’s not forget the 7-hour cut of The Thin Red Line.
The simple truth is that some stories just can’t be successfully pared down into a slim, trim 100 minutes. BENJAMIN BUTTON is one of them. Hell, this is the entire span of a man’s life, and a life lived under unique circumstances as that. No way to do it justice at conventional length.
But “trust the artist” just doesn’t make good business sense for the “entertainment journalists” of the world. Production woes and behind the scenes troubles attract more attention. Why else would Anne Thompson seize upon this like a shark seizes upon a swimmer with a bloody nose? The casual moviegoer doesn’t want to hear about everything going smoothly.
Sometimes, I wish we didn’t have to hear every damn thing about a movie before it comes out. I’d like to appreciate a film for what it is, not for the incidental details of its making. But how often does that happen anymore?
Yeah, things like this remind me of the days before the internets, when I typically didn’t hear about a movie until it was opening and could just wander into the theater fairly oblivious and ignorant. Heck, sometimes I’d actually see a movie and know NOTHING ABOUT IT IN ADVANCE. No international trailers with subtitles in farsi, no posters in 13 different versions including the Polish one, no pre-release casting of the Best Boy and Grips months in advance, no leaked scripts, no cast and crew roundtable at Comic Con with entire sequences of the film leaked to Youtube captured on a shitty camera phone.
You might see the trailer or maybe the movie would have no marketing budget so you’d read the first two paragraphs of the PRINTED newspaper review (the local paper no less) and say, “Huh, I forgot Terrence Stamp was still alive but Soderbergh is cool and I liked Out of Sight. Let’s go see The Limey, even though I know nothing about it.” (true story)
As much as I LOVE discussing movies and whatnot with this crew on this blog, sometimes I miss the salad years. A lot.
That’s what I said when Alison first pointed to that AICN review last week. If someone has seen it, and thinks the film is too long, why not explain why it’s too long rather than just whining, “It’s too long, it’s too long.” And now as Craig reports, a meme has found itself in the bloodstream of online movie reporters.
I will say this: Fincher’s film is being given front-and-center treatment with the coverage of the Olympics. The studio and everybody appear to be behind this one. This isn’t Zodiac Redux, thank goodness.