The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

276 Frank Oz
It’s amazing how you can do that without hurting a movie. So I’m sure some
of the movies that I’ve done move slower than they should, and if I looked
at them again I’d probably take something out.
There’s nothing overwhelming that you say, “My real cut of Bowfinger,
The Stepford Wives, or whatnot”—is someplace?
Oz: No, no. I’ve been fortunate in that. Oh, Stepford Wives is a whole different
deal. That’s the only movie I’d go back to and not recut, but I’d reshoot.
The other movies I’m pretty satisfied with. When it got down to making
decisions about things, I’d either fight for them very hard, or I’d acquiesce
because they weren’t that important. I’ve never had a real bad situation with
the other movies. Stepford was a whole different deal.
But in that case, and we don’t have to go into it, it’s not the case that your
vision or your print of the film exists someplace else; it’s just that there—
Oz: No, my vision does exist someplace else. It exists in my head. It never
got up there. It got way too complicated and way too big.
Oh, one other thing I wanted to bring up: Remember the scene in the
hotel where Janet Leigh and all the Mexican hoods are in there?
He says, “Hold her legs.” All of a sudden, it turned truly evil. I mean, it
raised the level for a second there. That was like a rape moment and I don’t
think she was raped, but it really elevated the evil. It evoked that nightmarish
feeling. It had a touch of The Trial there.
That’s always been my one reservation about the film, and I think Stephen
Hunter points this out in his review of the ’98 version: What happens
to her? They blow marijuana smoke in her face?
Oz: Really, it’s like a setup for a major rape. And it really is. It’s almost if he
wanted to get a sense of evil there but at the end said, “Well, this is not the
movie where she really is raped.”
Well, and what do they do? They play bebop music until she goes
mad. [laughs]
Oz: Yeah, yeah. [laughs] That’s what I mean. That’s really B-movie. There’s a
lot of little things. I love Marlene Dietrich when he goes to her place. What’s