Greed (film)/Trivia

• Creator Backlash: von Stroheim famously disavowed the studio's cut.
• Development Hell
• Executive Meddling: It's hard to blame MGM, really. Audiences, then and now, will not sit through nine-hour movies.
  • To be fair, it could have been serialized into shorter segments. It does seem like Stroheim wanted to make an HBO-style drama but had the bad luck of making it 70 years before that would be possible.
  • It has been said that von Stroheim had a footage fetish--the original cut was nine hours long.
• Missing Episode: The full cut of Greed is sometimes regarded as the "Holy Grail" of lost films. The seven hours of footage cut for its initial release were apparently incinerated by a janitor cleaning a film vault.
• Recut: A "restored" version was released that combined the existing footage with still pictures from the production. It runs nearly four hours.