When the cast of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” first saw the film, many of them were shocked. In post-production, Director John Hughes and Editor Paul Hirsch decided to tell a very different story than what was filmed in production. The original Ferris was a darker character. Ferris was a cigarette smoker and they filmed many scenes with him smoking. They cut all of that out in post. In the original draft, Ferris even delivered a monologue about smoking pot from a submarine and in production they ran out of time before they could film the scene with Cameron and Ferris at a strip club. No wonder the cast was so surprised.
In film and on TV, actors don’t create their own performances, editors and directors do. That’s one major difference between stage and screen acting. In the rehearsal process for the theater, it is not uncommon for an actor who is in control of their performance to sense something has gone “wrong,” stop, go back, and fix it to get it “right.” On a film set that’s someone else’s job. Actors don’t call cut.
Well-prepared actors may find themselves filming a scene when they forget a line or something happens that changes the direction of how they
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