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

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.

7 Hocus Pocus Chase In Baby Driver (2017)

Director: Edgar Wright

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

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

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

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

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

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

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