These films were huge in every respect, running well over two hours each and having casts of thousands. At first audiences responded enthusiastically, but as time wore on, size alone was no longer a drawing card. Such epics, with their huge budgets, became riskier projects. And the failure of Cleopatra, which nearly destroyed 20th Century Fox in 1963, brought this cycle of films to an end.
But an even more profound process was taking place, little noticed by movie goers. Behind the scenes in Hollywood, power was slowly but steadily shifting toward the creative elements of film.
At first, though, this didn't make that much difference in the making of films. Studios were still about the only game in town when it came to financing movies, and they were also about the only ones with national distribution systems. So there was still some balance between the business and creative elements; there was some check on artists.
If one looks at the non- spectacle films of the 1950s, one finds that they generally were well- edited and well under two hours in length. Again, picking a few movies at random, I found Father of the Bride was 93 minutes, Cheaper By the Dozen 85 minutes, and Cinderella 74 minutes. More to the point, at whatever length, the movies of this era generally don't seem flabby.
Jumping ahead to the late 1960s, I found some movies slipping when it came to simple length. For example, The Graduate was 105 minutes, Easy Rider was 94 minutes, and Midnight Cowboy was 113 minutes. But again, I dare anyone to find many major studio releases from this era that really fail the Cohn tired butt test.
But in the 1980s, the economics of film making began to change. Videotapes and premium cable channels became viable sources of revenue, making film makers less reliant upon the theater box office for their profits. A host of new media companies sprang up to try to capture these revenues. In addition, privatization and liberalization of media in Europe and other foreign countries revitalized their industries. Those newly empowered companies looked to Hollywood for product for their pipelines.
All of those companies started bidding for the services of star actors, directors, producers, and writers. That demand was expressed in the rapidly escalating salaries for those people. But the creative elements also saw their pay go up in another, less obvious way: They demanded greater control over their product. Top directors and producers now routinely demand, and get, final cut--the right to determine the ultimate shape of a film--as part of their contracts.
If one looks at the long films listed at the beginning of this article, it is quickly apparent that most of them were made by directors with big successes in their past. True Lies, for example, was by James Cameron, the director of the enormously successful Terminator 2 and Aliens.
Indeed, Cameron's career is a good example of how a director's increasing clout can affect the length of his films. His first feature was Piranha II: The Spawning at 88 minutes. Then came The Terminator, 108 minutes. Since then, he hasn't done a film less than 138 minutes long. On the other hand, those films that are made by some of Hollywood's lesser lights--such as Cool Runnings, Candyman, or Benny & Joon--still tend to come in closer to 90 minutes than two hours in length.
Some have even taken advantage of the money flowing into Hollywood to form their own production companies and truly take control of their careers. Rob Reiner, for instance, was one of the founders of Castle Rock, the movie production company recently purchased by Ted Turner. Cameron formed his own company, in part with foreign backing, to retain ownership of his films. As owners, directors obviously have greater control over their final product.
But even where control over the final shape of the film does not explicitly belong to a director or producer, if he has a good record, he still has a lot of leverage. As I noted above, Home Alone 2 was 120 minutes. This film would have been tighter and more geared to the attention spans of its target audience of children at 90 minutes. But the first Home Alone, from the same creative team, grossed something like $200 million. Given that past success, a movie studio might have figured they ought to trust the instincts of the film makers, or alternatively, they may have just been unwilling to jeopardize a successful relationship by criticizing them over a product that would still make money.
Of course, the world of film isn't the only place where such things happen. I defy anyone to read Stephen King's last few novels, bloated works all, and tell me that the man isn't lightly edited. Successful writers may still need a strong editor, but they may not always have one. And this raises an interesting point: Does length really matter, or more accurately, is conciseness really a virtue? After all, Stephen King's novels continue to sell well, even if some of us think they would be much improved if shortened. And some of the films that have been criticized for their overlength--True Lies, for example--have been quite successful at the box office.
The truth is that within certain limits an audience will tolerate a certain slackness in a movie, or book, that they otherwise like. Alternatively, if someone dislikes a movie, the thought that it could have been several minutes shorter isn't likely to impress him. Critics may rail, cineastes may carp, but we are about the only people likely to leave a movie saying, "That was pretty good, but 10 minutes could have been cut from the third act."
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