1) Nobody is allowed in the editing room except for the director and editor; others may only come inat the director’s discretion.
2) Until the film is completely cut, nobody except the director gives notes to the editor.
3) The Director has the right to watch the dailies.
4) At the presentation of each cut, the producers have the right to give notes to the Director, but the Director has no obligation to use them. (But the producers have no obligation to release the film unless there is a distribution commitment.)
5) Authority of the final cut rests with the Producers, unless otherwise specified in the director’s deal memo, i.e. the Producers have final authority over what to do with the film.

I find it hard to believe that Roth didn’t voice objections about Taymor’s film earlier in the process, but even if he did, Taymor had no obligation to listen, except that Roth is footing the bill, so he has a right to have the film recut… though he may have signed that right away in Taymor’s deal memo.

Producers have rights over what they produce — it’s their dime — but there’s a proper time and place for a producer’s input: it’s in the screening room, not in the editing room.

@ Krishna – I see your point in comparing a product and movie and the differences there. However, the issue I have is that a lot of the sampling is used to then “fix” the movie. So if the sample tells you “it is not funny enough” then you go back and make it funnier. I think this “adding flavors” based on sampling is ridiculous. At the end of the day, you keep adding, cutting and the movie could become unrecognizable.

Also, is the sample the best judge? Often, as Prakash mentions, no.

@ Prakash – Regarding your point of Director getting final cut – I agree that directors can be very attached to their movies. However, remember that an editor is the one doing the editing. The editor puts together what he/she thinks is the best version in concert with the director. So there is already another point of view that has a huge hand in how the movie is shaped.

And yes, the studios fun the movies, but I disagree that they should get to call all the shots. That’s the issue with art – why hire an artist if you know exactly what you want? Hire a trained monkey instead.

Multiple versions – interesting… somewhat like “choose your own ending” in some of the kids books I have read. While certain types of movies lend themselves to that, a lot of others (most?) do not – could there be different endings to Gandhi? Maybe it is different cuts (less humor, more humor). But as a writer, I wrote a story – I want THAT story told!! If you don’t like the story, make something else, but don’t make me give you ten options, you know? Again, the struggle of art versus business. Coming from the business world, you idea is so perfect – I totally get it with technology products, but with art… my heart switches

But formal market research need not work.
A few years back we had a movie called “Rok Sako to rokh lo”. A corporate house had decided to use formal marketing/testing and were very confident of success. The movie flopped.

My hunch is that the future will be on demand in-the-field editing of movies. The Web 2.0 model would be applied with users giving feedback and collective intelligence being used to decide the best version. There could be multiple versions in circulation with different subcultures among the audience favouring different versions. People would stop coming to movies just to see the movie, but would come to be involved in the process of movie making. I know this sounds a little Negropontish, but a decade back who thought we could have Wikipedia or blogs?

While in product design, it’s very difficult to test a revolutionary theoretical product – people sometimes need to “find the need the product meets”

With a ground breaking movie, it’s not a “theorical construct”- people get to see a finished product (maybe not a ‘final product’) and judge.

The only question to be asked is if the group of people is “representative” and if they can really tell the truth about how much they enjoyed a film. Statistically, if they are, the results should tell a lot about how the overall population will enjoy the movie (not necessarily how many will go back to see the movie- what caused Titanic to succeed)

Movies are no more unique than any other product (most of Product Design is in designing creative, innovative product)

The thing that all sampling misses is the impact of the “buzz” factor that sometimes makes movies “succeed” (though there are other methods to measure & create that)

KCRW’s Martini Shot had a great 4 minute spiel in part on entertainment industry market research (all the Martini Shot clips are great). KCRW is L.A.’s NPR channel with a lot of original, entertainment-industry programming that is all available online and on iTunes.

Martini Shot:
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/ma

…and scroll down to “The Bonus”. Then check out other clips for inside scoop and satire on movie and tv show production/writing.

If interested in more in-depth discussion of movie-making, check out KCRW’s “The Business” and “The Treatment” (the latter is interviews with directors mostly).

The Treatment:
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tt

The Business:
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tb