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British TV reedited into films for US video market

Started by George White, November 09, 2017, 10:16:59 PM

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George White

ABC Australia special

HBO-BBC drama directed by the Graff Vynda-K from the Ribos Operation







[imgfile:///C:/Users/rambu/Pictures/Not%20a%20film%20-%20a%20Tyne-Tees%20one-off.jpg][/img] Tyne Tees special


Replies From View

Quote from: Old Gold Tooth on November 09, 2017, 10:38:27 PM
Recent examples would be editing the first two series of The Trip into 2-hour films for the US audience.

Never watched them as it seemed pointless after having seen the series. You could only improve The Trip to Spain by hacking an hour off its runtime though.

I have both the television and film versions on DVD as I like comparing similar things.

It's a fair assumption that hacking an hour off the runtime would make it zip by more, but somehow the film edits of series 1-2 feel more ponderous and laboured than the originals.  They feel like those best-of compilations where you have to accept that the structure is off and repetition exists where previously there would have been a week between such very similar scenes.

Replies From View

Series 4 of Monty Python was edited into film-length compilations for US broadcasters without the Pythons' consent, and they took them to court over it.

Here you are:

QuoteLawsuit

While the first three series of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" were sold to non-commercial public television in the United States (which broadcast them pretty much as-is), the six episodes of the fourth series were bought by the commercial network ABC, which intended to air them as two 90-minute late-night specials.

Unfortunately, in addition to cuts made for time (to accommodate about 24 minutes of commercials for each special), the network's censors also slashed material for supposed "broadcast standards" – ludicrously eliminating words such as "damn," "hell" and "naughty bits"; jokes ("He used to go through four Jehovah's Witnesses a day"); and entire characters (one of the ordered cuts included "Entrance of man in wheelchair with sword in head, deleted to eliminate offensive references to handicapped individuals"). Punchlines were cut, making jokes incomprehensible. Python was surreal and stream-of-consciousness, but ABC's Python was head-shaking.

The first "Wide World of Entertainment" special, broadcast on 3 October 1975, contained "The Golden Age of Ballooning," "Mr. Neutron," and "Party Political Broadcast." When the Pythons later reviewed a tape of the show sent to them by Nancy Lewis, their U.S. manager, they were aghast, and sought an injunction against ABC's planned broadcast of the second special.

Thanks to a clause buried in the Pythons' original contract with the BBC, edits to the broadcasts were not permitted without their approval, and so they sued ABC at the United States Court House in New York's Foley Square. Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin appeared in court on behalf of the group. They argued that the edited programs did not constitute "Monty Python," and therefore broadcasting them would damage the group in the eyes of its audience. The edited programs could also potentially alienate a larger audience outside of the PBS stations' markets (for whom the ABC shows represented their first exposure to the group), thus jeopardizing the future sale of Python books, records and films.

ABC, which held that its cuts did not distort the Pythons' material, argued that dropping the planned broadcast of the second special would damage the network in the eyes of its affiliates and the public.

Eventually, the judge and all parties sat in the jury box to watch a screening of two versions of "Light Entertainment War": first, as originally run on the BBC, and then as it would appear as part of "Wide World of Entertainment." Nearly eight minutes were cut from the latter.

"I think their biggest mistake was letting us show our version before they showed their version," said Gilliam. "Ours comes out, we get the laughs. Then they show their version and there's no laughs. Not only has it been chopped up badly, but it's old material, it's not as funny as the first time. That's just dumb! If they'd shown theirs first, maybe they would have got the laughs so when they showed our stuff maybe ours would have looked long-winded. [The feeling could have been], maybe ABC did the right thing – they weren't trying to ruin it, the stuff deserved trimming."

Judge Morris Lasker favored ABC in his decision partly because of the network's claims of damages that could be incurred, and partly because of questions about copyright. [The Pythons held copyright over the scripts, but the BBC owned the copyright of the performances of those same scripts.] But by the time the case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals, ABC's second compilation had already aired, on 26 December 1975, thus making moot its claims of potential damages. The appellate judges were then concentrating on matters of copyright, and whether ABC's showing of "Monty Python" was a mislabeling of inferior goods, illegal under the Lanham Act.

Python and ABC (in conjunction with the BBC and Time-Life, the show's distributor) ultimately reached a settlement, which awarded the Pythons full rights to all 45 TV episodes. The fourth series was eventually sold to PBS in the States, "naughty bits" intact.

A footnote: The ABC edit was nominated for a 1976 Emmy Award for Outstanding Special - Comedy-Variety or Music.

That's from here:  http://www.montypython.com/tvshow_Monty%20Python's%20Flying%20Circus,%20Series%204/17

Mister Six

Quote from: bgmnts on February 12, 2018, 01:11:13 AM
I loved Rome when it first aired and I'm rewatching it on netflix now. I'd say the political intrigue and historical accuracy is pretty even balanced with the tits and blood. Just me though. I didnt know they chopped it up however.

Not sure, but I'll wager the version on Netflix is the original US edit. Also I wasn't clear - it was the first few episodes that were trimmed down, not the whole series.

George White

The US distributor for the BBC in the 80s, replacing Time-Life/HBO was Lionheart/Western World, who also released the videos of various ABC US TV movies, plus Granada and Yorkshire stuff like the David Warner-Robert Powell-Carrie Fisher Frankenstein and Terence Stamp in Chessgame, plus lots of trashy movies - HG Lewis, Ted V Mikels, Andy Milligan, Nick Millard, Octaman, Attack of the BEAST Creatures...

KGL79

They weren't reedited into films but the US edits of Tinker Tailor........... and Smileys People had chunks edited out in the interests of runtime. WTF!!!!!!