It was mentioned earlier in this forum that it may not be possible to re-issue the director's cut of
Texasville on BD because it was unknown if the proper materials exist. I'm still trying to track down more info on this, but a google search landed on this quote from what appears to be a 2003 newsgroup exchange hosted by critic Fred Camper:
"PB is not averse to recutting. He felt Columbia rushed him on
Texasville, so he went back and recut it to achieve a better balance between comic and dramatic elements. Finished only on tape, that version was broadcast by Showtime with the unexpurgated
Picture Show. It hasn't been shown theatrically because it doesn't exist on film." It's possible this guy is misinformed (for starters, he appears to get the cable channel wrong - see below), but still, it again raises the possibility that a costly re-creation of that edit would have to be done.
Anyway, some more bits and pieces I've dug up, including a late 2018 interview that suggests a film element wasn't created for the director's cut (though to be clear, Bogdanovich only states that a film print was not available)...
From an April 5, 1992 article in The Morning Call:
"....when
Texasville premieres next month on the Movie Channel, it will be 28 minutes longer than its theatrical version.
"This is the way
Texasville should have been seen when it was originally released," [Bogdanovich] said. "We had to take out a lot of the dramatic scenes between Jeff (Bridges) and Cybill and between Jeff and Timothy Bottoms.
"There was also a wonderful scene at the Centennial when Cybill sings a hymn. The balance between comedy and drama was off, so when the movie turned out to be a drama, people were thrown. Whereas the correct version, the longer version, has a better balance."
Why wasn't this "correct" version shown in theaters?
"We were cutting the picture under a lot of pressure," he said. "It didn't turn out like we wanted -- at all. It was rather sad. So now we're glad to have this second chance."
From an interview with Bogdanovich published 11/2013 in IndieWire:
Q:
At Long Last Love just came out in a new cut. Are there any alternate cuts lying around or movies you’d like to tweak?
A: Well, that was quite an amazing story about how that came about… But there’s a director’s cut of
Texasville that came out on laserdisc and I would dearly like for that to come out. It’s a much better film than the one that was released. It was available on Pioneer laserdisc for a while but that’s gone the way of the dodo bird. And I finally got
Nickelodeon out in black-and-white on DVD and that was a big triumph. It’s a much better picture in black-and-white. As Dave Kehr in the New York Times said, “it becomes a totally different picture.” And he’s right – it does. But most of my films I’ve had problems with like
Mask or
Nickelodeon, have come out in versions that I prefer.
Q: Have you talked to Criterion about
Texasville?
A: Yeah, we’ve talked about it and we’re still discussing it.
Interview with Bogdanovich from 9/2018 for Vulture/NYMag:
Q: Speaking of producers who bothered you: There are a lot of director’s cuts in the line-up of your Quad retro.
A: I wanted them to show the director’s cuts; I didn’t want to run the other versions. One problem is that
Texasville is not available in the director’s cut except on a laserdisc, which they weren’t going to show. I’m trying to get the Criterion Collection to let me put together the director’s cut of
Texasville, which is better in the sense that it’s a lot sadder. Because there’s 25 minutes missing [from the release version]. I wanted to reissue
The Last Picture Show in theaters before we released the new film. The head of the studio when we were preparing to make the picture was Peter Guber, and he said, “Fine.” While we were shooting, Frank Price replaced him. Frank Price did not like me, and I did not like him, because he had already fucked up
Mask, and I had fought with him on that. He didn’t want to reissue
The Last Picture Show. He referred to that as “cheating.” I thought that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. And the movie wasn’t available at the time. So we cut a lot of the sadder parts that referred back to the earlier film — because audiences wouldn’t have had a chance to see it — and that left it more of a comedy.
And from a prior post:
Peter Bogdanovich wrote:When we were preparing Texasville, Peter Guber agreed to let me recut The Last Picture Show by adding certain footage to it. The picture had not yet appeared on video so the idea was to add some footage and make a new version of it and put it out in theaters prior to the opening of Texasville. That started to happen...I reviewed all the material and decided there were about seven minutes I wanted to put back in...I put back about seven minutes and then Frank Price took over Columbia and Frank didn't like me because of the situation that happened at Universal on Mask, so Frank pretty much sabotaged that plan, which was to bring Picture Show out and then Texasville, so that was sabotaged and didn't happen. What did happen was that Texasville had to be totally recut because I had to lose certain stuff that wouldn't make any sense if you haven't seen Picture Show. It wasn't available anywhere. So that was unfortunately very sad. Texasville came out and was perceived incorrectly because it wasn't what we made. It was perceived as too much of a comedy when in fact the original Texasville was more evenly balanced between comedy and drama. Subsequent to that the long version of The Last Picture Show was finished on 35mm and on laserdisc and is available on Criterion laserdisc, seven minutes longer...Pioneer did a director's cut of Texasville so that also exists on laserdisc in a version that's twenty-five minutes longer. But the only way to see those two pictures the way we would have like them to be shown one after the other is on laserdisc.
(Same with the numbers cut out early on during the preview period, of which there are several.)
