Is Buckbeak Indispensable (& Other PoA Edits)?

[cynthiaanncoe at home.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 27405

Jenny wrote:
> 
> Are you all meshuganeh or something?  I say keep every single word 
of 
> PoA and make it a five or six hour movie; I'd sit through the 
entire 
> thing.  

You know what would happen if PoA were filmed as written?  It could 
bump up against 4 hours.  And what happens to exceptionally long 
movies?  They get hacked up into sad little mini-series events on the 
Warner Bros. network, starring Sally Field, Valerie Bertinelli and 
Dick Van Dyke, with ads for pimple cream every few minutes.

No, I maintain that something big in the PoA movie has to be cut, 
that whatever gets cut will be good because the whole book is good, 
and that cutting dialogue snippets and descriptions here and there 
won't add up to 100 pages of cuts.  PoA is mostly dialogue and 
action, which is what makes it so good.  There's not a lick of fat on 
PoA, so as painful as it will be, you have to cut muscle.  

Cindy (thinking of taking a meat cleaver to Flight of the Fat Lady)