After seeing the second episode, they have basically cut Gary Kurtz. The only brief times they mention him it’s negative. NO mention of the fact that he took over the second unit to direct many scenes in order to get the film finished on time before the studio pulled the plug. They just portray him as this “looming” figure who couldn’t control anything. Yet people who actually worked on the film have said the opposite and have been quite unhappy with the way he was portrayed in the first episode. God knows how they will feel after this second one.
Well that sucks.
We do now know about the different cuts of the film . It is said in this doc that the Biggs/ Luke scenes were cut very early on and BEFORE the rough screening George did for his friends ( De Palma, Spielberg etc) AND long BEFRORE ANY PUBLIC SCREENING. It seems that , for the one and only public screening prior to release, the only difference was the opening crawl. So all those people that have been claiming they saw a cut in the cinema that contained these scenes, are either flat out lying or completely misremembering.
Like, I fully expected some lying and exaggeration in Dark Side of the Ring. The wrestlers interviewed were all some variety of carny, guys who try to tell exciting and questionable stories for a living. Many are also pretty brain-damaged from concussions, so it makes sense they’d misremember.
I guess there’s not much of a difference between network-produced documentaries and carnie entertainment.
It’s been interesting hearing just how much influence Marcia had on this film, finally. The fact that George let De Palmas comments about the force get to him and George started re-cutting the film to eliminate much of the force , with marcia going behind his back and adding them all back in. George worshippers won’t be happy with this doc though.
Part of me thinks this was a condition that Marcia had for agreeing to do the documentary. It had to paint her in as favorable a light as possible for it to work.
This isn’t entirely uncommon in documentary filmmaking. Look at Vice’s own “Last of the Von Erichs” or FMW episode of Dark Side of the Ring if you want a thorough display of interviewee-influenced misinterpretation.