Guy briefly mentioned this in Friday’s round-up, but I thought I’d address it more fully here.
I kind of feel like I owe it to myself and to Ang Lee to give his forthcoming re-edit of “Ride with the Devil” a look. This is, of course, despite a severe personal disinterest that settled in when I first saw the film 10 years ago. But as a fan of the western genre, it seems only right to see what Lee originally had in mind.
I wasn’t aware, as Anne Thompson discusses in a recent piece, that the film represents the only project Lee ever edited away from his vision at a studio’s request. It doesn’t sound significant, but apparently the 11 minutes Lee trimmed (from an original 146-minute running time) were significant enough that Focus Features honcho (and frequent Lee collaborator) James Schamus has decided to dipped into the Focus-owned Polygram library to restore Lee’s version of the film.
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