When Mr. Oliver brings up Harry Cohn's remark about a movie being too long when Cohn's butt is tired and argues that today's audiences spend more time than we should at one screening, Mr. Oliver errs again. When an audience sat down to the feature films of the 1930s and 1940s, the main attraction was preceded by a newsreel, a travelogue or filmed band performance, one or more comedy shorts, possibly a cartoon, and the ever-present coming attractions trailers. In many cities, the customer saw a double feature, particularly due to the large assortment of hour-long features made for that purpose (routine westerns, Charlie Chan, the Bowery Boys, and offbeat stories with rising talent). When a single feature approaches the length of a double feature, there's always the possibility of an intermission.
To decide whether a film is too long, one sometimes needs to know what was shot and then unseen--although we can still say that the release version contained elements that were neither necessary nor entertaining.
David Hayes
Los Angeles, CA
Mr. Oliver responds: Mr. Hayes has a point. Randomly looking up a few of my favorite films from various eras and relying upon the subjective impressions of movie critics (no matter how numerous) isn't the most precise way to judge whether films are getting longer. Fortunately, since I wrote my article, I have found that Entertainment Weekly has done a comprehensive survey that confirms my premise: On average films have been getting longer over the years, especially since the 1960s, and today's films are noticeably longer than those of decades past.
When I cited Harry Cohn's remark about his ass getting tired when a film was too long, I wasn't talking about the simple length of time one sits in a theater seat. Rather, I meant that when a film's quality does not match its length, one becomes aware of physical discomforts that one might ignore during a better film.
Mr. Hayes's example of The Godfather says nothing about my contention that today's films often contain quite a bit of fat. Obviously, if the 30 minutes added to that film "fleshed out subjects that had been unclear or without motivation" and made the movie more "emotionally moving," they were not fat.
Indeed, The Godfather actually confirms my central point about the increasing control that artists have over their work having some potential problems. In his recent autobiography, Robert Evans, head of Paramount when The Godfather was made, recounts the problems he had convincing Francis Ford Coppola to make the film longer. Evans also admits that while he and Coppola usually got credit for the movie's success, some of the key scenes were actually the work of the film's editors. (Compare the success of The Godfather, artistically and financially, to that of One From the Heart, a film in which Coppola did have total control.)
CORRECTION
In the May Balance Sheet, the amount of the proposed spending cut by New York Mayor Rudoph Guiliani was misstated. The correct figure is approximately $1 billion.
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