Jaffe at Paramount didn’t like our movie and thought it was uncuttable and unreleasable, so it was tough going. Halfway through, Orion Pictures, the original producer, sold us to Paramount, which meant a change of many things, and people were nervous. The DOP, Owen Roizman, did a beautiful job shooting the film’s first half, but he was very talented but very slow, so we kept falling further and further behind.

Sonnenfeld: I was a first-time director, and I didn’t have any idea if I’d be able to communicate with actors. I understand it wasn’t an easy movie to make. Thompson: We know The Addams Family, which has become a beloved movie, as a box office hit. There were other moments where I had regrets about not cutting certain things, but I liked it. Like all movies that you direct and revisit, I literally forgot certain scenes, but I remember them now and love them again. Thompson: When was the last time that you revisited The Addams Family before this? In this case, I so missed showing the full Mamushka that the second we released the movie, I regretted it, so I was thrilled that Paramount could find that and remix the footage. When I released the Special Edition, I added that scene at the end so that you could look at it, but I didn’t put it back into the body of the work. The single best scene, and the funniest scene, in Get Shorty, is not in the movie. It should just be like a painting or a sculpture. I believe there should be one version of a film, not the special cut or a director’s cut or new or alternative endings and all that stuff. The Addams Family restoration is the first time I’ve ever wanted to add something to a movie. Anyway, Paramount went back into the vault, found the cut workprint, and they found the original negative for it, so we’ve re-installed the full-length sequence that Raul Julia and Christopher Lloyd perform. I said, ‘Hey, listen, if you’re going to do that, then I’d love to participate but is there any way you guys can go back into the vault and see if you can find the missing half of the Mamushka dance sequence?’ Now that I’ve done Schmigadoon! I suddenly love singing and dancing, which I never did before. They also wanted to have a Blu-ray version and a new digital download.

Barry Sonnenfeld: Paramount called me about four or five months ago and said they were going to remaster the movie in 4K because all the streaming services want everything that way.

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