Are movies really getting longer, or does it just seem that way? The answer is yes! Movies are getting longer -- and many of them seem even longer.
Why?Because so many movie directors -- including an enormous number who don't deserve it -- now have "final cut" written into their contracts.
Final cut means the director has the last word on how a movie is edited and completed and shipped to theaters.
There was a time when studios could demand that a film be shortened. And that still happens when a director does not have final cut. ("American History X" and "Babe: Pig in the City," for example, were taken from their directors and re-edited before release.)
But whenever a director has a box-office smash, his agent twists the studio's arm so that final cut is put into his contract. Even if the film won't be the better for it.
So, if the studio heads feel a movie is flabby and should be cut down to 90 minutes or two hours, but the director insists on a three-hour epic, it goes the director's way.
As an example, let's take Martin Brest, a competent director who has made four movies, all of them enjoyable and all of them financially successful.
First came "Going in Style" (1979), which he also scripted -- a delightful comedy-drama with excellent performances from George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg as a trio of bored retirees who decide to rob a bank.
For some reason, Brest didn't direct his second movie until 1984, when he boosted Eddie Murphy to superstardom with the violent and profane blockbuster action-comedy "Beverly Hills Cop."
Another hit, "Midnight Run," followed in 1988, an action-comedy about a modern-day bounty hunter (Robert De Niro) trying to get a bail-jumping mob accountant (Charles Grodin) from New York to Los Angeles in one piece.
And in 1992, Brest combined box-office success with critical acclaim as "Scent of a Woman" became another hit and won Al Pacino his Oscar. (Pacino played a blind former military officer who gives a lesson in life to young, naive Chris O'Donnell.)
In theaters now, however, is Brest's first flop, "Meet Joe Black," starring Brad Pitt as Death and Anthony Hopkins as the billionaire he's come to escort to the afterlife -- a bloated remake of the twice-filmed play (1934/1971) "Death Takes a Holiday."
Aside from making movies almost as infrequently as Stanley Kubrick, there is something else notable about Brest's work: Each film is longer than the one before.
"Going in Style" is 96 minutes, "Beverly Hills Cop" is 105 minutes, "Midnight Run" is 122 minutes, "Scent of a Woman" is 157 minutes and "Meet Joe Black" is a whopping 180 minutes -- three full hours!
What's next? A remake of "The Birth of a Nation" at 10 hours?
There's a lot wrong with "Meet Joe Black," ranging from the inversion of the original story to lapses in logic big enough to house the Titanic to Brad Pitt's central performance (which seems to be based either on Jeff Bridges' alien in "Starman" or a cockatoo).
But its biggest problem is that ridiculous length.
As our movie critic Jeff Vice said in his review a few weeks ago, there's a nice little 100-minute movie struggling to get out of this epic-length exercise in tedium.
In fact, most of the other problems in "Meet Joe Black" would probably be overlooked if the pacing were better.
And that's the case with far too many movies these days.
Even "Psycho," which director Gus Van Sant insists is a shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic, is longer than the original.
Hitch's "Psycho" is 109 minutes long. Van Sant's is 116 minutes.
Shot for shot?
As for "Meet Joe Black," it's more than twice the length of the 78-minute original, "Death Takes a Holiday."
Toward the end of the film, Death is preparing to leave his mortal body behind and Hopkins' character says, "It's hard to let go, isn't it?"
Apparently that's how Brest felt in the editing room.
Chris Hicks may be reached by e-mail at hicks@desnews.com