> "We did talk about 'The Thin Red Line'.
> He said he had over 6 hours of edited story finished. What you saw in the
> theaters was what needed to be for the reps of a movie theater. I asked
> him if
> he thought of releasing the 6 as a DVD box set and I assured him that
> there
> would me a line of people just waiting to get their hands on it. He said
> that
> some things that you put so much of your life and heart into are best left
> alone
> for a few years."
>
>
> I thought there was no such thing as a 6-hour cut of THE THIN RED LINE.
> Assuming this is really straight from the horse's mouth, you mean it not
> only exists but that it may be eventually released after "a few years"???
>
> I still think rumor that it actually exists is a load of horse puckey....
>

It probably exists in some rough cut stage. Malick's comments according to
this guy (which suggest that he would need to spend some time on it to make
an extended cut of it) seem to confirm that. Some people seem to think that
there is a finished 6-hour cut of the film that the studio butchered -- I
suspect that this is not true. Certainly, there's enough story there.

And BTW, a lot of films exist in insanely long rough cut versions before
they're edited down for release.

As for "it may eventually be released after a few years" -- this seems to be
more just speculation on the guy's part. I mean, it's been 11 years since
the film came out. I'd love to see Malick release a longer version (and I'm
sure Adrien Brody would, too). But I also don't want the film we have right
now (and which I love) to be seen as some kind of compromised, butchered
version, which is why I always bristle when people talk about how they
really want to see this mythical 6-hour cut of TTRL, which is presumably
going to answer all their concerns (all that voiceover, all those snippets
of scenes, characters passing in and out of the narrative, etc.) about the
extant version. I happen to think those "concerns" are what make the movie.
I don't want all those questions answered.

-Bilge