Originally posted by: canofhumdingers
interesting. What are the scenes?

1) Just before the still-existing scene at the Airforce Press Conference, there's a missing scene in the Neary home as Roy and Ronnie are getting ready to go. This is where we (used to) first see that Roy has sculpted a miniature mountain in the midst of his miniature train layout. We also see that he's hung UFO-Sighting newspaper clippings all over his "hobby" room, and even hung a couple of Star Trek models. These items are still seen fleetingly in later scenes, but this missing scene really dwelt on the revisions Roy made to his hobby room ... most especially the sculpted mountain. In fact, the entire point of the scene is to show that Roy has gone from merely seeing the mountain (in shaving cream, pillows, mounds of dirt) to actually building it with his own hands.

2) Just before the mashed-potatos scene, there's another missing scene in Roy's hobby room. Ronnie is calling him in to dinner, but he is obsessively scoring ridges into his model mountain. This is very suspenseful for the audience - because the immediately preceding scene is where it's revealed that the "mountain" location is Devil's Tower, Wyoming ... and from the topographic map in the film, it's clear that Roy is getting closer to the actual shape of the mountain. All he needs to do is lop off the top ...

But he goes into dinner and becomes infatuated with sculpting mashed potatos into the mountain shape. In all versions of the film after 1978 (and there have been many), this is the first time we see Roy sculpting the mountain (although he did sorta play with the shaving cream). In these later versions of the film, the audience knows nothing about Roy's miniature train layout mountain before they see him sculpting the mashed potatos. The potatos gag is still funny in its own right, but the real joke is ruined. The scene is a shadow of its former comedic self.

The studio insisted Roy's obsession with the mountain shape be toned down, and these two scenes of him building the mountain at home were cut. Other scenes were also cut, but these two were never restored. I find it hard to believe that the negatives for these particular two scenes were completely destroyed, while many others deleted for the "Special Edition" survived.

My conclusion? Spielberg's a bigger dick than Lucas. A much more talented bigger dick, but a far worse revisionist. Except for a few sound tweaks and the insignificant subtitles issue, Star Wars as it existed in 1977 has now been issued in a home video format. Where is CE3K '77???? Waaaaaaa!!!

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