This is an appropriate moment for me to comment on sneak previews, which I've always objected to. I've written a whole article about the peculiar phenomenon of sneak previews, which the Americans absolutely swear by. At one point there was David Putnam who wanted to introduce the same system into England. And they quote the... the one film they always quote, which was re-cut as a result of sneak preview reports and then became a great success. But, of course, you don't know if it wouldn't have been a great success, because an audience somewhere in the backwoods in New Jersey, is not representative of the world audience. In fact, the... any statistician would laugh you out of court, at that point. To say, you mean an audience, which has not been representatively selected, and which has come to see a movie on a completely different subject, like they've come to see a comedy and they're presented with a drama, or they've come to see a drama and they're presented with a comedy, is totally unrepresentative. And to take their words like it was the Bible, this is ludicrous. But it's a system that you cannot shake their faith in it. It's quite extraordinary.

And in The Deceivers, it led to that result. And as a result of these sneak previews, which in this particular case... The irony was, that in this particular case, the sneak previews were not imposed on the director, it's the director who wanted to submit himself to that process. Ismail didn't oblige him to do that. And they weren't obliged to listen to the results. But he said, 'I don't want anybody to laugh in the wrong place in my movie'. And then he also said, 'In my opinion the editing process finishes at the point, only at the point, when the producer, or the director, or somebody else...' No, the producer... 'The editing process finishes at the point when the producer physically removes you from the editing table'. There isn't a natural end to the editing. That... that, I think that's ridiculous as well, because one works to a schedule, and budget, on editing as well as on shooting. You should be... also, the sneak preview system... it causes a peculiar rupture in the natural process of presenting a work to an audience, because the natural process should be that the artist finishes his work, whatever it may be, and then he says, 'Look, this is my work, I have finished it to the best of my ability, within the framework available to me'. 'Here is my work, I have finished it to the best of my ability. I like it and I hope you like it'. This is what should be the natural relationship between an author and an audience. But if you have sneak previews in the middle there, what you're saying is: this is my work, I think I've finished it, but if you don't like anything, it can always be changed. This is not a way to produce any work of art. And in this case art is not at loggerheads with box office. They use the previews in order to get a better box office result, but it doesn't have a better box office result, because all the examples they give you. Look what happened to that film, Fatal... the film they always quote is Fatal Attraction. But nobody knows if that film wouldn't have been a success. Just because some preview audience in New Jersey said, 'We don't like the ending'. The whole thing is totally ludicrous, but they're absolutely fixated on it, they won't part with it.