During the mid-1970's, Burt Reynolds was sitting on top of the world. He could have made any film he wanted at any studio in Hollywood. He could have proposed making a film in which he sang the names in a phone book and he would have sold the idea by the end of the day. Despite his audience's expectation that he belonged in action films, Burt chose to use his power to star in a musical that would be a throwback to the days of Cole Porter- At Long Last Love.
The film was seen as a love letter to a bygone era when hugely profitable musicals attracted gigantic audiences. Certainly, Fox thought it had a goldmine when it paired Burt with the sexy Cybill Shepherd in a can't lose production. Sure, neither Burt nor Cybill were known for their singing, but that could be fixed at the mixing board. Production went full speed ahead as director Peter Bogdanovich put together what he thought would be a nostalgic look at the swing era starring the biggest star around.
Unfortunately, everything seemingly went wrong. Most critics despised the film, faulting the singing, acting and choreography. Burt's fans, expecting an action packed film possibly featuring an ape of some kind, were disappointed and stayed away in droves. As everything fell around him, director Peter Bogdanovich sought to blame the studio's meddling for the film's financial and critical failure. He pointed to the various edits he was forced to make, the studio's inability to see his vision and its blind acceptance of focus group comments. But every failed director does that, right? He probably just got bitter at his own failure. Or maybe not...
When a film is sold to television, it inevitably must get edited, not just for content, but also for time. When At Long Last Love needed to be re-cut for television, Fox's staff editor Jim Blakely quietly made his own cut of the film, restoring it back to Bogdanovich's shooting script. Oddly enough, this cut of the film became the default version in 1979. Since critics had written it off and the director couldn't bear to watch it, nobody noticed that Mr. Blakely had changed the film.
This new cut of the movie was quietly gaining new fans, but it wouldn't get noticed until the film became strangely popular on Netflix's streaming service. When asked to give a statement about the newfound popularity of the film, Mr. Bogdanovich decided to view it himself after all these years and was shocked to see that the version Netflix was showing was not his cut. He researched things and discovered that Jim Blakely had secretly recut the film according to the shooting script. Ordinarily, a director would be angered at a situation like this, but Bogdanovich was delighted. Unfortunately, Jim Blakely had already passed away but his newly found cut was blessed by Bogdanovich, re-mastered and released to Blu-Ray. This was its first home video release in over thirty years, proving that sometimes it just might be studio meddling that ruins a picture.
