Dead said:
Wish we could one day see the 6 hour cut
so would I, in addition to the cast seen in the final cut of the film, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen and Mickey Rourke also performed, but their scenes were eventually cut. Editor Leslie Jones was on location for five months and rarely saw Malick, who left her to her own devices. After principal photography wrapped, she came back with a five-hour first cut and spent seven months editing, with Thornton contributing three hours of narrative voice-over material. It was at this point that editor Billy Weber came on board and they spent 13 months in post-production and the last four months mixing the film, using four Avid machines with a fifth added at one point. There were no preview screenings but several in-house ones, the largest of which was attended by 15 people for marketing executives. The editors faced the challenge of blending footage of veteran actors with less-experienced ones, integrating the many cameos, and the voice-overs. According to Jones, "Malick removed scenes with dialogue whenever possible, with the final film varying greatly from the original concept". Four months after principal photography, Malick invited Toll to a rough cut screening of the film. In December 1998, Toll did the first color correction at the lab prior to the film's release in North America.
The editing also resulted in many of the well-known cast members being on screen for only a brief period: for example, John Travolta and George Clooney's appearances are little more than cameos, yet Clooney's name appears prominently in the marketing of the movie. The unfinished film was screened for the New York press on December 1998 and Adrien Brody attended a screening to find that his originally significant role, "to carry the movie", as he put it, had been reduced to two lines and approximately five minutes of screen time. On April 15, 2001, an interview with Adrien Brody revealed that he was still upset over the removal of his work. He expressed his opinions in an interview with the London newspaper The Independent:
"I was so focused and professional, I gave everything to it, and then to not receive everything ... in terms of witnessing my own work. It was extremely unpleasant because I'd already begun the press for a film that I wasn't really in. Terry obviously changed the entire concept of the film. I had never experienced anything like that... You know the expression 'Don't believe the hype'? Well, you shouldn't."
Malick was upset that the studio screened his unfinished version for critics and Penn ended up helping him in the editing room, shaping the final version. Malick spent three more months and cut 45 additional minutes from the film. The director refused to subject his film to test screenings before delivering his final cut. After Geisler and Roberdeau told their story to Vanity Fair magazine, Medavoy's attorneys declared them in breach of contract and threatened to remove their names from the film unless they agreed to do no future interviews until after the Academy Awards.
