Thu. May 26, 2005
Los Angeles, CA -
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has expressed concern over the forthcoming Special Edition Director’s Cut DVD of Alexander, due out August 2. Warner Home Video will separately release the original theatrical version on the same day.
According to director Oliver Stone, the new version is shorter by an estimated eight minutes, minus, in large part, references to Alexander’s bisexuality to make the film “more accessible” to viewers.
“For someone known as a fearless, uncompromising filmmaker, Stone has really compromised his own artistic integrity,” GLAAD Entertainment Media Director Damon Romine said in a statement to the press. “This is not a special edition director’s cut, it’s an abridgment designed to pander to the lowest common denominator.”
The film was critically panned and considered a commercial flop when it opened in theatres last November. In interviews, Stone blamed “a raging fundamentalism in morality” in the U.S. for the film’s commercial failure.
“They called him Alexander the Gay. That’s horribly discriminatory, but the film simply did not open in the South, in the Bible Belt. There was clear resistance to the homosexuality,” Stone told Daily Variety in December.
But according to critics, there were many other problems with the Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie vehicle unrelated to the depiction of Alexander’s sexuality.
The New York Times said Alexander suffered from “puerile writing, confused plotting and shockingly off-note performances.” The Philadelphia Daily News called it “one of the year’s authentic disasters” and CNN’s Paul Clinton said it was “a ponderous death march of a story that seemingly never ends.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, the shorter version will not entirely eliminate all references to Alexander’s romance with Hephaistion (played by Jared Leto), but Stone says, “We just don’t dwell on the relationship as much.”
“Calling this DVD a ‘director’s cut’ and wrapping it up in an attractive new package does a disservice to consumers who believe they are getting something more for their money, not less,” says GLAAD’s Romine. “What could really boost the DVD’s profile would be to further explore Alexander and Hephaistion’s relationship, not edit it out.”
GLAAD is focused on promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events as an attempt to eliminate homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in the media.
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