Friday, April 6, 2012

More Deleted Scenes from Manna-Hata: Minetta Lane

Initially, I had mixed feelings about cutting this scene: I think it's a nice character study and an interesting slice of life from the late nineteenth century but I also think it just doesn't offer anything more than that. It's adapted from a newspaper essay written by Stephen Crane. In my first draft of the scene, I pulled back from the dialects that Crane had "transcribed" for his article... but sadly, not nearly enough: I was absolutely embarrassed when the poor actors read it out loud for me last summer. Even though I suspected at the time that the scene would not ultimately be in the final production, I went ahead and finished shaping and editing it.

Now, more than a year later, I see virtually no chance that it will be used, and so it takes its place among the outtakes of Manna-Hata.

Minetta Lane

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