Keith Phipps finds that watching deleted scenes can radically alter interpretations of a film:
Take Blue Velvet: When David Lynch’s landmark 1986 film was released on Blu-ray 25 years later it contained nearly an hour of previously lost footage. That’s nearly half the running time of the final film, which allows for plenty of room for perception-altering scenes, even one in which the film’s hero Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) watches and initially fails to stop an apparent date rape, a moment that, as Bill Wyman noted in Slate “would have made Blue Velvet a different movie.”
On the one hand, I’m not sorry I watched that scene or the other lost Blue Velvet footage. They’re examples of a filmmaker working at the height of his powers. On the other hand, I wish I had the ability both to watch those scenes and forget it. I’ve seen Blue Velvet many times over the years and I’m sure my next viewing will find me attempting to plug what I’ve seen into the narrative. So that’s what the college Jeffrey’s left to take care of his ailing father looked like [here]. And who knew he dated Megan Mullally while there? [above]
The Dish 