10 Genius Edits That Totally Saved Movies

10. A Murder Trial Frame Narrative Was Removed - American Beauty

Sam Mendes' masterful drama American Beauty ended up scooping five Oscars - including Best Picture and Best Director - while receiving three other nominations, including a well-earned nod for Best Film Editing.

But Tariq Anwar and Christopher Greenbury's outstanding editing job went far beyond what either Oscar voters or the general public knew at the time, because they were ultimately charged with erasing an entire misjudged subplot from the film.

Originally, the story was bookended by scenes involving Lester's (Kevin Spacey) daughter Jane (Thora Birch) and her boyfriend Ricky (Wes Bentley) being wrongly convicted of Lester's murder as part of a media trial.

However, in the final week of editing Mendes made the decision to remove these scenes entirely, feeling that they not only robbed the film of its mystery and ran counter to its redemptive themes, but turned the story into "an episode of NYPD Blue."

In writer Alan Ball's own words:

"In the first draft, there was a framing device of a big media trial, where the videotape of Ricky and Jane has made them guilty in the public's eye. It all led to this horribly upsetting ending where they went on trial and got convicted. We actually shot it, and when it got into editing it was just too cynical and too awful. Because with Thora and Wes in the movie, that love story is so heartbreaking, and the trial was also at odds with the whole heart of the movie, of Lester's journey and his realisation, so it just fell out."

This is certainly a case where less is more dramatically, because it's tough to imagine this framing device doing anything but bloating the movie out with excess subplot baggage.