I didn’t know this cutting room came with a floor…

A stream-of-consciousness look at killing an essential scene in the final hour.

“Oh crap it’s too long.”

That thought impolitely snuck up late one night in the final days of production. I had finished my work for the evening, and sat back to try and watch it with fresh eyes; tried to play this game where I imagined I had never seen something I’d been all but living in for several weeks.

I liked it. Incomplete, sure, but generally good. Looked good, sounded nice, told a decent story and had some pretty fun, well defined characters. It’s just a little long. That’s what I would have told someone who wasn’t me who was making it; it’s a hair long. There’s one beat too many. Which, that late in the game translated to:

Oh sweet merciful jesus fuck.

With (as I described here) something as unforgivingly concise as our piece, I assumed it was a “tough break” type thing. Yet, upon a second “fresh eyes” viewing (can you do that twice?) I realized that the moment it began to lag, this one specific scene, was incredibly — how do I say — removable. Like a Jenga block on the first turn. Like Donna’s sister in the pilot of that 70’s show. You could just cut that shit and no one would notice.

The scene was one in which — after Kronin blew up Ostro’s ship (causing a chain reaction that causes the tunnel they’re in to depressurize — Evelyn grabs Ostro’s with one hand, and the ground with the other. They’re billowing in the wind, and she delivers an impassioned monologue. I like that monologue. That monologue has literally my favourite line in the entire episode. I wish this early cut had music, because the music was dope too.

I miss you scene…

But the fact that the response was as enthusiastic as it was when I equally as enthusiastically asked the director for a lunch meeting to pitch cutting the scene, was a sign it was the right decision. Also, it got the episode down to being the second or third longest out of every other one submitted, rather than the absolute longest, which makes me think something about brevity and wit and yeah.

And now, for the first time ever, I reveal to you the one-and-only deleted scene from the Pilot episode of The Exhibition.

I promise the song was really nice.