Does anyone else here know which interview I’m remembering where GL says “the original film/negative/interpositive” was cut up for 97ANH? And the the “original” no longer exists. I’m pretty sure he made it clear but he may have been referring to existing media of that time degrading.
He re-cut the negative, yes. But the trims were saved, not tossed in the trash.
So, he was being honest, on a technicality, that the original negative didn’t exist. But all of its components still existed, just in pieces.
Yes technically their own negative was changed. But in any real sense there’s not “one original reel” since they exist all over the world and have been restored by fans and the BFI etc. Again it’s all somewhere in the big “revisionist” thread pinned above here.
What does this even mean? There is only one negative for the films and that is the one that was “destroyed” or more accurately disassembled. There is in fact “one original reel” and it’s the original negative. Everything else is a copy and therefore is not original, at least not in a physical sense. I’m not even sure why we’re still arguing about this… who cares what George said about the negative, what matters is that we’re getting what we’ve always wanted finally, let’s bicker about the process, after we find out what it actually entailed once released…