To honor Burt Reynolds this week, we’ll look at some of his biggest hits and misfires. Today’s film is At Long Last Love. The film is not as well known as some of Burt’s biggest films, but it wasn’t supposed to be that way. At Long Last Love, was made at the height of Burt’s Hollywood power. This loving tribute to Hollywood’s Golden era of musicals was directed by Peter Bogdanovich and co-starred another 1970’s superstar Cybill Shepherd. At this time, Burt could have made any film he wanted to make and his choice was this one. It was highly anticipated and heavily budgeted. Would the world embrace this departure from Burt’s usual lowbrow comedies featuring fast cars, pulchritude, apes and Dom Deluise?
The world would not. At Long Last Love would become synonymous with celebrity excess; an example of a pretentious project produced solely because of its star’s enormous ego. The film fell into relative obscurity, only mentioned in later years as one of the worst movies of all time. As it turned out, the failure of the film wasn’t completely the fault of its director or star. Fox had panicked after a few bad focus group results and had ordered them to re-cut the film. It was the re-cut that bombed at the box office.
However, as the years went on, At Long Last gained a cult following from its many cable TV showings. In fact, some of its newer fans felt that the film they were seeing couldn’t possibly be the same bomb derided by critics and shunned by audiences. Were they delusional? As it turned out, they were not.
A few years ago, a fan of the film contacted Mr. Bogdanovich and asked him to take a look at a version of the film that had been uploaded to YouTube. The fan asked him the question its newer fans had wondered for years- was this the theatrical cut of the film? Bogdanovich was stunned. It was not the theatrical cut he remembered- it seemed to be his original cut of the film. He was even more surprised to discover that this version had been recorded off of cable TV. This was, for all intents and purposes, the ‘official’ cut of the film, officially provided by Fox to cable networks who wanted to show the film. How could this be?
Bogdanovich did some research at Fox to determine why the company was using the cut that it had originally asked him to change. It turns out that an employee at the studio’s archives department was asked to make a copy of the film that could be used in the future for anyone licensing the film. Angered at the new edits Fox had ordered on the film, the employee re-cut the film to the original version and put it in the studio vault for future use. Since Bogdanovich had been angered by the studio’s treatment of the film, he hadn’t watched it since he turned over the theatrical cut. The film was never made available on home video, so nobody ever noticed that the cut being shown on television was different from the original version. It was the original cut that the film’s new fans had embraced, vindicating Bogdanovich’s vision. Bogdanovich convinced Fox to finally release the film on DVD and Blu-ray, making small additions that the archives employee had missed. This version became a smash. Bogdanovich has stated that he is forever grateful to that archive employee whose errant editing made it possible for Bogdanovich’s original vision to be preserved and shown.
