Since the Golden Age of Hollywood movie studios have held test screenings of soon-to-be-released movies to gauge audience reactions by asking those in the audience to fill out questionnaires or take part in focus groups to discuss how the movie they saw could be improved. Many directors feel it isn’t fair that studio executives will drastically change movies based on the opinions of small groups of people, and there are plenty of horror stories about masterpieces like Blade Runner being recut in the attempt to make the films more mainstream. There is also the legendary mind-boggling story of a test audience for The Wizard Of Oz suggesting that producers remove Over The Rainbow because they thought the song was too slow (thankfully, they didn’t listen). With those examples in mind, it’s easy to side with the directors, right?
