76
by klimov
Although Lynch produced and owned the underlying rights to Inland Empire, he pre-sold the rights in all territories to French sales agent Studio Canal, meaning that when the film came out they controlled the rights for a 10-15 year period. After the premiere in Venice, the only major distribution offers Studio Canal received from the US (Universal amongst others) demanded cuts to the length of the film. Lynch was unhappy with this, but Studio Canal were equally unhappy with the idea of not selling the film in the world's largest territory and losing money. The solution: Lynch purchased the US rights back from Studio Canal. Having done so, he then had to arrange his own distribution networks to distribute the film. None of which was planned and the cost of which would have ultimately run into the millions for Lynch and Aysymmetrical. The point being that Lynch was happier spending millions of dollars than seeing the film cut in anyway, which frankly puts the lie to John Neff's bullshit line that as a 'professional' Lynch would never invest or use his own resources on a production. Fact is, Lynch just doesn't care enough about the FWWM deleted scenes to invest his own time or resources in this particular case, nor does he want to see the scenes reincorporated into the film. Which returns us to my original sentiment, that after all this time and fuss the scenes are unlikely to change the world (or anyone's perception of FWWM).