Pirating the Pirates
In Vancouver, 2011, Willa Ross and the narrator attempted to restore Sergio Leone's 1966 western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly after MGM altered it in the early 2000s. The film's original runtime had been extended from 161 to 179 minutes, with Eastwood and Wallach dubbing missing dialogue and a soundalike speaking for Lee Van Cleef.
The mono soundtrack had been reworked into a surround mix with jarring modern gunshot effects. The pair aimed to combine sound from a 1998 DVD with video from a Blu-ray of the Italian cut. However, they soon realized the Italian cut was even more dissimilar to the international version, with the infamous torture scene altered and various shots missing.
The pair gave up for nearly a decade, but eventually, better materials became available, including a new Blu-ray with superior picture quality and an old LaserDisc with an uncompromised mono track. A local repertory cinema programmer helped arrange an official Digital Cinema Package from MGM to be swapped out for the pair's restored copy for a public screening, marking a magical evening.
Written by urgent.news from Hacker News's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
