Vaderisnothayden said:
Hmmm... I'm not confident in dismissing these accounts. I can imagine people remembering things wrong, but these people seem awful certain.

For years I remained convinced that I saw a longer cut of Ghostbusters 2 than what was released on video. To this day, whenever I see the movie I am surprised by the lack of a scene that I "remember." I can't say I'm certain that I ever saw it, but I *feel* that I saw it, since the scene--in some form--was internalized at an early stage. Here's what I think happened:

* GB2 media injected into my mind certain scenes, viz. a slightly longer opening with Dana and the scene where Ray tries to crash the Ecto-1A.

* I saw the movie.

* I didn't own the VHS, but I did read the book a few times and see it several times on TV. Movies are frequently cut on TV, so I assumed the missing scenes had been trimmed for time.

The same conditions obtained among Star Wars fandom, I assume. There was a lot of media out there with the cut scenes, so they were internalized early on. (In some cases, before the movie was even released.) And then, after viewing the movie at the theaters, fans returned to that media, creating and reinforcing a composite narrative with parts from both the movie and the books. In fact, the books may have taken the role of a de facto primary source in the years between theatrical releases. There was no home video market to speak of, thus no way to correct this composite memory, leaving us with a kind of mixed text in the collective memory. I think that is less likely to happen today, with the quick turnaround between theatrical release and DVD release, and the corrective forces at work on the internet.

And, like C3PX said, there's no evidence for a print with these scenes ever making it into distribution. It's like Big Foot or the existence of extraterrestrials--all we really need is one good piece of evidence, and the consensus would do a 180.