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Friday, March 28 • 2014
Vol. 6 • Issue 78
Lyme Disease writer to speak at library See Page 11
Why are fewer kids on teams? See Page 19
First of Two Parts
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The deleted scenes
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The hit Steve Martin movie filmed in Nelson in the summer of 1986 turned out very different from how the screenwriter first envisioned it. Some scenes were improvised during production and others were left on the editing room floor.
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Steve Martin starred in the 1987 hit film Roxanne, which was filmed in Nelson. GREG NESTEROFF
W Nelson Star Reporter
hen Roxanne, the hit Steve Martin movie filmed in Nelson, was released on DVD in 2000, it contained no deleted scenes or bonus features apart from the theatrical trailer. This was a let down because we know some parts did end up on the editing room floor. (If you’ve never seen the film, or haven’t in a long time, best do so before reading further.) But in 1997, Martin published his original screenplay, giving us some idea of what didn’t make the finished movie. What’s striking isn’t only what was left out but what was added. When the film was released in 1987, Martin told the New York Times it was “almost depressing” how many big laughs came from improvised material. However, he considered “those
spontaneous gags as much a part of the screenplay as anything I spent two and a half years creating.” For instance, a scene where Martin’s character buys a newspaper from a coin box, screams in horror at the front page, and then spends another quarter to put it back was added after producer Dan Melnick had the dispenser placed on the street as a set decoration. The finished movie is far better than the script and for the most part the deleted scenes don’t add much. Still, it’s interesting to learn what didn’t make the cut and imagine how it might have appeared in the film. TWENTY-FIVE DRAFTS Roxanne was Martin’s adaptation of Edmund Rostand’s 19th century play Cyrano de Bergerac, about a man whose gigantic nose comes between him and the woman he loves. Martin starred as C.D. Bales, fire chief of Nelson, Wash., and Daryl Hannah as the lovely Roxanne, an astronomer in town for the summer.
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One of the first things Martin had to figure out was where the movie would take place. “I needed a setting where people could run into each other on the street and be believable,” he told the Times. Martin lived in Aspen, Col. in the 1970s and decided a ski resort town “was the perfect size and everybody hung out in the same place.” The exact location was apparently chosen by the time the script was finalized, for Nelson is mentioned by name on the first page. Martin began thinking about a modern-day Cyrano in 1983 and wrote ten screenplay drafts before showing it to Columbia Pictures in 1985. He eventually wrote another 15 drafts, although some versions only had a few scenes altered. (In 1990, Martin donated his drafts, revisions, and final shooting script to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre at the University of Texas.) “The secret was to have the courage to throw things away at any point when they didn’t seem to be working,” Martin
said. “I’d get a better idea and it would affect everything else, so other things would go out of balance.” Martin had co-written most of his films to that point, but had never done a solo screenplay. Feeling insecure, he laboured at it 12 hours a day, and at one point asked Gore Vidal to write the movie, who declined. Martin did, however, receive suggestions from Melnick and directors Herb Ross and Mike Nichols. In one early version, Chris, C.D.’s rival for Roxanne’s affection, dies in a fire and several months later, Roxanne tells C.D. she’s pregnant and wants to raise the child with him. However, Martin decided killing Chris off was “arbitrary.” “My big breakthrough was when I asked myself, ‘If I keep Chris alive, what is he thinking?’ and I realized that after his one night of glory, he would be tremendously uncomfortable with Roxanne.” Story continues to Page 8
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