Looking for a special extended edition of Heaven's Gate? Out takes from your favorite Scorsese film? A few extra mintures of The Pink Panther? It aint gonna happen ... at a recent screening of Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking Of Heaven's Gate at the Berlinale Film Festival MGM/UA archivist John Kirk confrmed that sometime in the early 1990's MGM simply discarded entire reels of cut film to save a few bucks on storage space.
Says Kirk: "What I found out was that MGM had thrown out all of their out-takes. It was not just Heaven's Gate, but Raging Bull, Pink Panther, all the Woody Allen out-takes, all the Scorsese out-takes...every trim was dumped to save about $20,000 in storage costs. It was absolutely criminal."
So, if you've ever wondered why MGM special editions aren't quite so special, now you know ...
The full article appears in Screendaily here. Thanks to Mary for the pointer.