Cinephiles may argue about many things, but Andrew Dominik‘s 2007 masterful film, “The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford,” is generally not one of them. While the film was an expensive box-office bomb for Warner Bros. at the time and was greatly overlooked by general audiences, the movie has since grown in mythical stature over the years to find its rightful place in modern classics; easily one of the best films of that decade, if not right there at the very top.
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Starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, with Sam Shepard and Mary-Louise Parker, an incredible who’s who of actors who were not bonafide stars or major names at the time, like Jeremy Renner, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Paul Schneider, Garret Dillahunt, and more, also feature into the film.
READ MORE: Brad Pitt Says ‘The Assassination Of Jesse James’ Is His Favorite Of His Movies
Stories of the making of ‘Jesse James’ are a bit legendary by now. Still, in the recent Team Deakin podcast episode with cinematographer Greig Fraser (“Rogue One,” “Dune,” “Zero Dark Thirty” and the upcoming “The Batman“), the DP turned the tables on Roger Deakins and his wife, James, and mostly asked them about the making of Dominik’s beloved Western (Deakins was the cinematographer on the film and yes, it’s absolutely stunning to look at).
One of the interesting stories told is the fact that apparently, in an earlier version of the script, Brad Pitt’s Jesse James character died much sooner. The film was then left to contemplate the notoriety that Robert Ford assumed he would find for killing James, instead of the scorn and infamy he would receive instead. The Deakins couple said the idea of killing off their star prematurely was unheard of? “Kill off Brad Pitt so early, no!” James Deakins recalled the studio note saying.
This led Roger to launch into a story about one of its legendary longer versions and all the things that were cut out of the movie.
“There was a four-hour cut that I actually loved,” Roger said. “I read somewhere that it was shown at the Venice Film Festival in its four-hour version, but it doesn’t exist now, and that’s a shame. The studio’s problem was they thought there’d be more train robberies, and Brad Pitt would be more of a traditional Western outlaw. And when Brad was killed,, and the film progressed in this way that followed Robert Ford… and the way he wasn’t celebrated like he expected to be later in life… but of course nobody wanted that.”
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Roger went on to describe all these elements they shot that weren’t in the final film; failed relationships with various women Robert Ford had, how his older brother Frank James (Shepard) took tourists to visit his farmhouse since he was still a notable ex-outlaw, the actual funeral of Jesse James and how someone tried to kill his wife (Parker) and much more. “We shot all these scenes,” Roger explained. “I thought it was a wonderful tapestry of all these things that happen to these characters that we set up in the first half of the movie.”
Roger said he thinks Dominik is still pleased with the theatrically-released cut of the film, but still laments the loss of this longer cut. Will we ever see the longer cut of the movie? That doesn’t seem very likely. The last time Dominik spoke about the movie publicly in 2016, he said that even the Criterion Collection wasn’t interested in releasing it (which seems crazy and probably no longer true, one imagines). Regardless, as usual, the Team Deakins podcast is a must-listen, and you can listen to the full ‘Jesse James’ conversation below. Also, #ReleaseTheJesseJamesCut.
