Originally posted by: boris
Untrue. Monty Python and the Holy Grail has no delted scenes - every scene they shout for the movie they used in the movie (of course there'd be out-takes, though). It if was in the script, then it was intended to be in the movie, and some limitation forced them to remove it. It may have been special effects limitations, it may have been that the scene ruined the flow or pace of the movie... the movie may have been too long, or it may have been that the film had a big glaring scratch in it that couldn't be removed! Scripts, from what I hear, are about 120 pages long. That's less then 1/3rd the number of pages in a novel - and from what I've seen of scripts they contain much less words on each page than a novel does - and many of those words are wasted on describing lighting and costumes and such. I don't agree that they start out deliberately with this flexibility to remove stuff - that's just stupid. It happens later on because for whatever reason they can't use the scene in their movie.
Untrue. Monty Python and the Holy Grail has no delted scenes - every scene they shout for the movie they used in the movie (of course there'd be out-takes, though). It if was in the script, then it was intended to be in the movie, and some limitation forced them to remove it. It may have been special effects limitations, it may have been that the scene ruined the flow or pace of the movie... the movie may have been too long, or it may have been that the film had a big glaring scratch in it that couldn't be removed! Scripts, from what I hear, are about 120 pages long. That's less then 1/3rd the number of pages in a novel - and from what I've seen of scripts they contain much less words on each page than a novel does - and many of those words are wasted on describing lighting and costumes and such. I don't agree that they start out deliberately with this flexibility to remove stuff - that's just stupid. It happens later on because for whatever reason they can't use the scene in their movie.
Most of what you wrote in the above quote is utter rubbish, but that first statement unbelievably so! In the 2001 Special Edition DVD Release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you can read from the features on the back "A glorious extra 24 seconds absolutely free" this is a scene that was cut, and re instated for this Special Edition release. If every scene they filmed was used in the movie, then there is something very strange here, as this scene was filmed, and it did not originally appear in the movie. Which I think was good because the scene was crap and it takes away from the pacing of the film. It looks like other people didn't like it either because the 2006 version doesn't seem to have it (though I an not 100% sure about this). My DVD, the old non anamorphic one, was 89 minutes, the SE was 90 minutes and the 2006 rererelease appears to be back down to 89 minutes again. But either way, MP and the Holy Grail did have at least one scene that was cut.