Martin Scorsese Trying to Edit Kenneth Lonergan’s ‘Margaret’ Out of Limbo
“The reality that a bold talent like Lonergan has to fight this hard to get this film released is a truly sad commentary on commerce kicking art’s ass.” A key line from this article about the travails of getting the movie Margaret locked and released:
Kenneth Lonergan‘s follow-up to his brilliant debut, You Can Count on Me, has had a notoriously rough time making it to theaters, both due to legal issues and a dispute over final cut.
The film was shot almost six years ago. The editing process has been called a nightmare. Lonergan has a three-hour cut that Fox Searchlight isn’t too keen on releasing. Why? Because they won’t release a version over two hours long. Lonergan has final cut, which hasn’t made the situation any easier. Great talents such as Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese, Scott Rudin, and Sydney Pollack did passes on the film to get it down to a shorter length.
And right now, Scorsese is doing another edit of the film with Lonergan.
This is a movie that stars Matt Damon, Anna Paquin, Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Kieran Culkin, Olivia Thirlby, and Mark Ruffalo, and at least according to Ruffalo in the article is a “masterpiece.” But for whatever reasons, Fox Searchlight only wanted a two hour movie, not three.
The movie’s IMDB page.
A plot summary:
A young woman (Paquin) witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath, where the question of whether or not it was intentional affects many people’s lives.