Movies - TV
How The Twilight Zone Led To The Creation Of The First Director’s Cut
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
When director Elliot Silverstein saw that the studio was cutting up his “Twilight Zone” episode “The Obsolete Man,” he complained to the Director’s Guild of America.
Silverstein wanted to keep his cut of the film. The DGA henceforth declared that a director's original cut, before studio tinkering, should be called a “director's cut.”
“The Obsolete Man” follows Wordsworth, a librarian, as he is put to death by a dystopian government that executes anybody they find to be obsolete.
The episode mostly takes place in a courtroom space with Nazi-like judges. Silverstein’s editing disagreement with the studio had to do with the judges “singing” their disapproval.
In Marc Scott Zicree’s “The Twilight Zone Companion,” Silverstein recalled telling the editor, “‘I want them standing there until their voices reach a certain pitch.’”
Silverstein continued, “He said, ‘Well, I don't want to cut it that way.’ I remember very clearly, I felt my temperature and my blood pressure go up.”
Following this, Silverstein and other directors wrote a Director’s Bill of Rights that allowed directors to create their own cut before editors are allowed to touch a film.