Here is the response from that e-mail that Sovereign sent to Mark Pudleiner:
I asked the one of the owners and producer Gary Goldman.
This is his reply.
- Mark
" Though it was approved at the storyboard stage. It was at a screening in April or May of 1988 just 6 months before completion of the film at a a 20th Century Fox theater in Soho Square, London, with just Don, John, me, Steven and his first wife and George in one of the small 30 seat theaters. The problem is that when it was edited, cutting 19 scenes out - including audio, by one of Steven’s favorite editors at Pinewood Studios in England, it was mainly the T-Rex shots (scenes to me) of full head shots with wide open mouths, attacking into the lens of the camera at the child dinosaurs as they took cover in the briars. However, it was less than a minute lost sections of the T-Rex attack and the kids. Steven and George both felt that those scenes would have triggered an audience of 4 and 5 year olds crying and having their mothers and fathers holding them in their arms in the lobby waiting for a safe time to take their kids back to their seats. Those cuts remained, the tiny short cuts were taped together and rolled and we took them back to Dublin. However, we never saved the prints or the negatives for those scenes, all were animated and cleaned up, many of which were in color.
The additional 10+ minutes of cuts came after we finished the film. Steven and the same editor, who had been fast-tracked to get a green card, to move to Burbank and work with Spielberg there at Amblin on the Universal lot on other projects. Steven continued to edit the film to be sure it would not disturb parents or their children. I believe we delivered an 80 to 82 minute film including all credits. The final edited length was 69 minutes, the same as Bambi (1942).
Best,
Gary "
Alright, so, we learned some things from the message sent to Mr. Pudleiner:
- He asked producer Gary Goldman, strangely. Pudleiner was an animator for the film, so it's odd since you'd think he'd have some knowledge of this stuff himself. It's almost like our response was from him and not Pudleiner...
- Goldman had confirmed when the Sharptooth scenes were first cut out- April or May of 1988, just a mere six or seven months before release. This makes me think that if the film wasn't delayed in 1987 from late 1987 to late 1988, maybe the scenes would have been in the film if it was released then?
- The scenes WERE approved in the storyboard stage, but at a screening at a 20th Century Fox theater in Soho Square, London, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had felt that the Sharptooth scenes would be too scary for children, and that their parents would have to carry them into the lobby before eventually returning them to their seats.
- The cut parts of the scene with Sharptooth attacking the children was under a minute in length.
- We also learned where these cuts happened, at Pinewood Studios in England.
- These Sharptooth cuts were taken back to Dublin, but weren't saved unfortunately. Many of them were actually fully animated and in color! That is something new. Currently, we only have the storyboard drawings from mostly the thorn scene, and a couple of cels, but I had no idea in the slightest that most were actually animated! I thought they were cut pretty early on, but I guess not
This might mean that the long-rumored scene of Sharptooth ripping Littlefoot's mother's back open was animated. It does excite me a little, as it may be possible that all the fully animated scenes may be found someday
- The rest of the 10+ minutes of cuts were done after completion of the film (meaning mostly all the cuts happened after the soundtrack was created). But how many minutes total were cut from the soundtrack? We should check AMCAlmaron's analysis for that, as he did some really great searching for where and when lost scenes may have happened in the film.
- Goldman said that the original runtime was to be 80-82 minutes. That means 11-13 minutes must have been cut, not 10!
If I missed anything, or said something that was off, please tell me and I will fix it.
Thanks to Mark Pudleiner, Gary Goldman, and of course fellow member Sovereign for composing the message in the first place!
Wow, that was long, someone better thank me for this analysis
