Wherein Two Known Offenders Comment on Lengthy Movie Running Times...
David Fincher:
"I do agree you can't just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages. Sometimes, maybe filmmakers can fall in love with the story they're telling and maybe need to be more diligent in how they're telling it. There's stuff in the narrative [of Zodiac] that's not essential to the investigation, but if you start removing that stuff, it becomes even more of a dry police procedural.You need to have that characterization in there but not wear out its welcome. It's not my intention to be boring. The hope is you're able to walk a fine line."
Zodiac, 160 min.
Fight Club, 139 min.
Jerry Bruckheimer:
"[Pirates' distributor Disney] loved the film. They always would like things shorter to get more screenings in in a day, but they also recognized we made a very effective movie that held people's interest. When you walk out of that theater, you want to feel like you've had a complete meal."
Pirates: Dead Man's Chest, 150 min.
Bad Boys II, 147 min.
[via]
Posted by karen at February 28, 2007 5:40 PMNow some movies ( I.e a Sergio Leone epic) deserve to be 2 + hours long. I recently was looking at the movie listings for my local multiplex, and it seemed
that 3/4 of the titles were well over 2 hours long.
Now I'm sure everyone thinks that their movies are the exception to the rule, but the fact is most of these big budget movies do not deserve a long running time. What are they trying to do, justify the overblown budget for another remake/ sequel by giving the customer more minutes?