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7 Amazing Scenes Directors Had To Fight To Keep In Their Movies


Summary

  • Trusting a director’s vision can lead to powerful moments that drive the entire movie.
  • Directors face challenges from producers, actors, and other creatives, but achieving a shared vision produces consistent results.
  • Directors sometimes have to fight against budgets and studio interference to keep important scenes that add depth and emotion to their films.



Some amazing scenes that drive home an entire movie were almost cut, but the director stepped in to fight for it. Directors must contend with a variety of factors that could lead to a scene being cut: a limited budget, concerns about the run time or rating, or producers not seeing the point of certain scenes. However, a handful of powerful movie moments make the case for trusting a director’s vision.

Directors don’t only contend with producers, but also actors and other creatives when trying to get their best ideas off the ground. Everyone thinks differently and the various cast and crew members may all imagine something distinct when thinking of the “best version” of the movie. However, the most consistent results usually happen when everyone is working towards the same vision of the movie — a vision that can be shared by two or more people.


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7 Hocus Pocus Chase In Baby Driver (2017)

Director: Edgar Wright

Baby Driver

After being coerced into working for a crime boss, getaway driver Baby is determined to escape his life of thievery and violence to make a life with his girlfriend Debora, However, when he finds himself taking part in a heist doomed to fail, things start looking desperate.

Release Date
June 28, 2017

Cast
Jamie Foxx , Jon Hamm , Jon Bernthal , Ansel Elgort , Lily James , Eiza Gonzalez , Kevin Spacey

Runtime
113 minutes


After the many car chase sequences that rival the Fast & Furious movies, the scene that almost didn’t make it into Baby Driver shows the protagonist running away on foot. After Baby pays off his debt, he is coerced into continuing his life of crime, but everything goes wrong during a heist. When Bats kills a security guard, Baby kills Bats, then he is forced to flee the police — while listening to Focus’ “Hocus Pocus.” It is a turning point in the movie where Baby starts a war with Buddy and Doc.

Amazingly, director Edgar Wright paid for the foot chase to be filmed himself. After the movie’s budget was cut, Wright took things into his own hands: “I had to use my own money to pay for two extra days of shooting so we could get it,” Wright said to Rolling Stone, “and it’s my favorite bit in the film.”

6 Fish Guts Scene in Snowpiercer (2013)

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Chris Evans holding an axe and looking angry in Snowpiercer.


Now Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho constantly battled producer Harvey Weinstein while filming the post-apocalyptic movie Snowpiercer. It is doubtlessly one of Bong’s best movies — and he had to fight to make it that way. In one particular scene, the revolting lower-class passengers from the back of the train come face-to-face with a masked crowd armed with axes. One of the masked people guts a fish in front of the rebels as a kind of bloody intimidation tactic. Bong famously told a bald-faced lie to keep this scene in the movie.

According to Bong (via Vulture), “Harvey Scissorhands […] took such pride in his edit of the film.” Weinstein wanted to cut 25 minutes from Snowpiercer, including the fish scene. On the spot, Bong lied and said the scene meant something to him personally because his father was a fisherman, and Weinstein relented.


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5 Lloyd Holding A Boombox In Say Anything (1989)

Director: Cameron Crowe

Boombox scene in Say Anything

First-time director Cameron Crowe had to jump through some hoops to make one of the most iconic movie scenes of the 1980s happen. First, when Crowe contacted Peter Gabriel there was some confusion because the biopic Wired had also requested to use “In Your Eyes” around the same time (via Mental Floss). Gabriel turned down Wired, not realizing that Crowe was talking about a different movie. Eventually, this misunderstanding was straightened out, and Gabriel permitted Crowe to use “In Your Eyes.”


Then, Lloyd Dobler himself had some reservations about the scene. John Cusack thought the scene made it look like Lloyd was groveling. They solved this issue by blasting Fishbone’s “Turn the Other Way” on set and having Cusack adopt a “look of defiance,” signaling that Lloyd was not giving up. Crowe dealt with a lot, but the result was a famous scene of teenage romance.

4 Kate Tells Her Tragic Christmas Story In Gremlins (1984)

Director: Joe Dante

Phoebe Cates as Kate Beringer wearing a woolly hat in Gremlins

Gremlins

When a father gives his son Billy a magical creature known as a Mogwai as a gift, the boy is given strict rules to follow regarding its care. When a lapse in judgment creates the mischievous Gremlins – creatures intent on destruction that threaten to ruin Christmas for the entire town of Kingston Falls – it’s up to Billy and his Mogwai companion Gizmo to save the town from the army of little monsters.

Release Date
June 7, 1984

Director
Joe Dante

Cast
Phoebe Cates , Corey Feldman , Zach Galligan , Hoyt Axton , Polly Holliday , Howie Mandel

Runtime
106 minutes


While they are trying to find a way to defeat the growing mob of Gremlins, Kate tells Billy that the reason she doesn’t like Christmas is that her father died trying to pull together a Christmas surprise for her. Gremlins is a strange Christmas movie that is not exactly a Christmas movie, and this scene plays into that. While it takes place at Christmas and hints at themes of family, it is altogether scarier and sadder than the likes of Elf. Yet, Christmas, and Kate’s experience with it, are important to the story.

It is not at all surprising that this scene was met with resistance. Director Joe Dante said in a documentary (via Film School Rejects):

“We worked so hard on this scene and tried to make it have just the right touch of pathos and goofiness, and I was really happy with it and thought this really encapsulates the tone this movie has for me. On the way back to the editing room the editor turned to me and said ‘this will never be in the picture.’ And it became my quest to make sure it stayed in the picture.”


Indeed, Dante had to argue with executives to keep Kate’s monologue in Gremlins but was successful in the end.

3 “Another Day Of Sun” In La La Land (2016)

Director: Damien Chazelle

Mia and Seb kissing by the lamplight in La La Land

La La Land

Written and directed by Damien Chazzelle, the romantic musical La La Land tells the story of Seb Wilder (Ryan Gosling) and Mia Dolan (Emma Stone), a jazz musician and an aspiring actress pursuing their respective dreams in Los Angeles. The pair meet and fall in love, sharing their passions and hopes with one another as they become closer. J.K. Simmons, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Finn Wittrock appear in supporting roles.

Release Date
December 9, 2016

Director
Damien Chazelle

Cast
Hemky Madera , meagen fay , J. K. Simmons , Sonoya Mizuno , Rosemarie DeWitt , John Legend , Ryan Gosling , Finn Wittrock , Ashley Caple , Josh Pence , Emma Stone , Jason Fuchs

Runtime
2h 8m

If “Another Day of Sun” teases La La Land’s ending, then it was vital for the movie to open with the freeway musical number. The number perfectly kicks off the movie by introducing the atmosphere of Old Hollywood, despite taking place in the 21st century. Director Damien Chazelle didn’t have to fight for the scene to be included, per se, but he did put in the extra time when he realized that the scene needed to be in a different place.


Originally, La La Land was going to introduce Sebastian and Mia first before “Another Day of Sun” happened. When this felt wrong for the movie, Chazelle and the editors cut the musical sequence altogether (via Cinema Blend). However, a few months later, they figured out a way to include “Another Day of Sun” after all. Chazelle said, “[…] we realized […] you need to announce that you’re a musical off the bat. […] So we put it back in […] And lopped off a bunch of stuff before it, and then suddenly, it worked.”

2 No Man’s Land In Wonder Woman (2017)

Director: Patty Jenkins


Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman is the first film in DC’s series focusing on Diana Prince. Gal Gadot reprises her role from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and, this time, must stop the villainous Ares with the help of Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). The film received generally positive reviews upon release and was followed by Wonder Woman 1984 in 2020. 

Release Date
June 2, 2017

Director
Patty Jenkins

Runtime
141 Mins

The now-famous No Man’s Land scene in Wonder Woman has become one of the most praised sequences in the DCEU. Diana Prince shrugs off the coat hiding her armor and charges into No Man’s Land under heavy fire to save a civilian town. Members of the creative team had doubts about including this scene, prompting director Patty Jenkins to personally storyboard it to convince them of its value.

Jenkins had this to say about the scene (via Fandango):

‘I think that in superhero movies, they fight other people, they fight villains. So when I started to really hunker in on the significance of No Man’s Land, there were a couple people who were deeply confused, wondering, like, ‘Well, what is she going to do? How many bullets can she fight?’ And I kept saying, ‘It’s not about that. This is a different scene than that. This is a scene about her becoming Wonder Woman.’”


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1 Bus Stop Scene In Barbie (2023)

Director: Greta Gerwig

Barbie

Barbie is a film adaptation of the generational iconic toy directed by Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach. The film centers on Margot Robbie’s Barbie who is expelled from Barbieland and travels with Ken (Ryan Gosling) to the real world in search of happiness. The film also stars Simu Liu, Will Ferrell, and several other famous celebrities in cameo roles.

Release Date
July 21, 2023

Cast
Margot Robbie , Ryan Gosling , Simu Liu , Ariana Greenblatt , Helen Mirren , Nicola Coughlan , John Cena , Will Ferrell , Ritu Arya , Michael Cera , America Ferrera , Alexandra Shipp , Kate McKinnon

Runtime
114 Minutes


The most sublime scene in Barbie, which underscores the point the movie is trying to make about humanity, almost didn’t make it in. Anyone who hasn’t seen Barbie has likely heard of the scene where Margot Robbie’s Barbie is sitting on a bus stop bench observing the people around her and is moved to tears. An older woman sits next to her (played by Oscar-winning costume designer Ann Roth), and she is quite unlike anyone Barbie knows in Barbie land. Barbie’s emotional, stunned “You’re so beautiful” and the woman’s wisely self-aware response “I know it” is nothing short of breathtaking.

In multiple interviews, director Greta Gerwig talked about how she stood her ground when studio executives suggested cutting Barbie’s bus stop scene. Gerwig said to Rolling Stone:


“I love that scene so much. […] And in early cuts, looking at the movie, it was suggested, “Well, you could cut it. And actually, the story would move on just the same.” And I said, “If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about. […] The way Margot plays that moment is so gentle and so unforced. There’s the more outrageous elements in the movie […] But to me, the part that I can’t believe that is still in the movie is this little cul-de-sac that doesn’t lead anywhere — except for, it’s the heart of the movie.”

The scene perfectly captures Barbie’s themes of real womanhood and the beauty of growing old. When scenes like this exist, and everyone knows that directors fought to include them, it’s a wonder that anyone tries to tell a director to cut a scene from their movie.

Source: Rolling Stone,Vulture, Mental Floss, Film School Rejects, Cinema Blend, Fandango, Rolling Stone



This story originally appeared on Screenrant

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