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You know about the uncut version of Dead Poets Society, yes?
Saturday, January 25th, 2025 08:46 amI was reminded this week that perhaps not everyone knows about the fantastic uncut version of Dead Poets Society (1989) (starring Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, etc.) (directed by Peter Weir; written by Tom Schulman). I feel that everyone should know. This is one of my all-time favorite movies and it is even better with the missing footage. Every moment tells toward the whole and directly plugs into other scenes, answering what otherwise look like holes in the script.
The extended/uncut -- director's cut? -- version aired on US broadcast television exactly once. That's where I saw it. It must have been c. '90-'91? It has never been released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, or streaming. Guess where it was released -- seriously, guess! ... Have you guessed? ... Yes, Laserdisc! The one and only authorized home-media release of the uncut version of Dead Poet's Society was on Laserdisc. (If it ever comes out on a medium I can watch, I would like to buy it.)
Today, you can watch the cut scenes on YouTube. Bundled together, they're 14 minutes, 24 seconds. And of course the movie itself (as aired in theaters) is available on Disney+ for free with a subscription, and for a rental or purchase on most (maybe all) the usual streaming platforms: 2 hours, 8 minutes, without the cut scenes.
Why the cuts? Movies rarely ran long in those days, for sure. But while one of the cut scenes indeed seems the least valuable, if something had to be chopped for time, others feel more valuable than some scenes that stayed. The fandom generally believes that those scenes were cut to keep certain subtext from surfacing. I'm personally not necessarily convinced that was the original film editors' motive, even if it could have been a result; I think the general audience would not have seen that subtext, regardless, and time pressures mattered for theatrical releases then. However, the continued choice to not make those scenes available post-Laserdisc has fewer explanations. Either there are rights issues (highly possible), or the director or writer or someone with clout truly doesn't want these scenes in (also possible), or they are indeed, to this day, afraid of subtext surfacing. I may well be naive, but I can't help but feel the first two are more likely. The money they could make would surely have overwhelmed subtext worries by now.
The extended/uncut -- director's cut? -- version aired on US broadcast television exactly once. That's where I saw it. It must have been c. '90-'91? It has never been released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, or streaming. Guess where it was released -- seriously, guess! ... Have you guessed? ... Yes, Laserdisc! The one and only authorized home-media release of the uncut version of Dead Poet's Society was on Laserdisc. (If it ever comes out on a medium I can watch, I would like to buy it.)
Today, you can watch the cut scenes on YouTube. Bundled together, they're 14 minutes, 24 seconds. And of course the movie itself (as aired in theaters) is available on Disney+ for free with a subscription, and for a rental or purchase on most (maybe all) the usual streaming platforms: 2 hours, 8 minutes, without the cut scenes.
Why the cuts? Movies rarely ran long in those days, for sure. But while one of the cut scenes indeed seems the least valuable, if something had to be chopped for time, others feel more valuable than some scenes that stayed. The fandom generally believes that those scenes were cut to keep certain subtext from surfacing. I'm personally not necessarily convinced that was the original film editors' motive, even if it could have been a result; I think the general audience would not have seen that subtext, regardless, and time pressures mattered for theatrical releases then. However, the continued choice to not make those scenes available post-Laserdisc has fewer explanations. Either there are rights issues (highly possible), or the director or writer or someone with clout truly doesn't want these scenes in (also possible), or they are indeed, to this day, afraid of subtext surfacing. I may well be naive, but I can't help but feel the first two are more likely. The money they could make would surely have overwhelmed subtext worries by now.
