Several film blogs have posted Jamie Stuart’s thoughts on yesterday’s NYFF press conference for Brian DePalma’s Redacted. In a nutshell: DePalma mentioned that the film’s final montage (which consists of real photographs of real victims of real terror and war-associated violence, and which is thought by many to be the most powerful portion of the film) is in danger of being “redacted” by the film’s distributor, Magnolia Pictures, at the request of the Magnolia/HD Net founder Mark Cuban. According to Stuart, DePalma’s comments were discredited yesterday by Magnolia’s president:

As [DePalma] began discussing the film’s use of actual war photographs and their graphic nature, Eamonn Bowles from Magnolia began shouting from the rear of the Walter Reade Theater to refute De Palma’s claims that Mark Cuban was trying to, well, redact them from the picture’s release. Then, just as the press conference was coming to a close, producer Jason Kliot rushed the stage and grabbed moderator Jim Hoberman’s mic to offer the crowd his version of this distribution controversy. I was left wondering how spontaneous this all was or whether they knew it would be immediately blogged upon to stoke media attention.

I was less inclined to see this as a pure stunt. I knew DePalma had been pushing this button at press conferences as far back as Telluride, where his statements were vague enough to be misinterpreted but loud enough to be difficult to miss. If this fighting between filmmaker and distributer started as a ploy for attention, then it doesn’t make sense that Magnolia would wait this long to publicly respond. Still, unsure how to interpret this latest event, I sent an email this morning to Mark Cuban to get the official word. Cuban confirmed to me that Magnolia has, indeed, asked DePalma to remove the images from the film, and will not release Redacted unless the final montage is cut. More details after the jump.

“The film is going to be ‘redacted’ before we release it. He is using images that have not been cleared. We can not use images that have not been cleared. No movie can,” Cuban writes, noting that Magnolia has offered DePalma the opportunity to buy the film back and release it on his own dime. “At that point if its a matter of principle to him, he can absorb 100 percent of the risk and release the film as he sees fit. If he chooses not to, then we will release the movie without the images.”

Cuban characterizes this business decision, at least in part, as a moral issue. In other words, don’t expect the montage to resurface as a DVD extra on his watch. “There is no way I am going to include images of people who have been severely wounded or maimed and killed when the possibility exists that their families could unknowingly see the images and recognize a loved one,” Cuban writes. “In this day and age, those pictures will be stripped out of the DVD release and unquestionably be posted on the internet exponentially increasing the likelihood it could happen. I wouldn’t do that to anyone.”

How will this shake out? As of this writing, Redacted is still being promoted front and center on Magnolia’s website. DePalma is still scheduled to do a press day in New York tomorrow, which is being promoted by Magnolia’s publicists. The film is still scheduled to be released in New York and Los Angeles on November 16. My guess is that if DePalma had a serious intention to release Redacted outside of the auspices of Magnolia, he would have already unplugged himself from their distribution and publicity machine. My guess is that DePalma (who told the crowd at Telluride that he made the film for HD Net/Magnolia on the promise that he’d be given $2 million to do whatever he wanted) is resigned to making the cuts, but as a point of pride and principle, has decided not to do it quietly.

In any case, with Cuban’s stated motivations as a guide, the redacting should spare the film’s final (and most gut-wrenching) shot, which blends seamlessly with the journalistic images but, as DePalma recently told Anthony Kaufman, was staged. “When you shoot the crucifixion of Christ, how do you represent it?” DePalma said. “You don’t have the real Jesus, so you have to do artistic rendition.”