Most people find David Duke, a racist who cheats on his taxes, a deeply reprehensible human being. Topher Grace is no exception. That made it difficult, though, when Grace was hired to play him in a Spike Lee movie, namely next week’s BlacKkKlansman. So Grace turned to his hobby; re-editing blockbuster trilogies into much tighter and shorter movies.
Grace is most famous for doing this to the Star Wars prequels, pushing all three down to an 85-minute feature (which is pretty good, by the way.) For Grace, the pressure of playing Duke, and then coming home and seeing him on the news, was enormous, and he needed an outlet. So he turned to his editing bay. According to IndieWire, his cut this time was for the Hobbit movies, which are, combined, seven hours and change. Grace, uh, got that much lower:
Grace said he managed to reduce the entire trilogy to two hours, and felt that it was “a lot tighter…I don’t know what other guys do. Go fishing? For me, this is just a great way to relax,” the actor said. “There’s something really zen about it.”
This sort of plunges Grace right in the middle of a massive nerd argument since The Hobbit is a short book that probably didn’t need the sprawling adaptation it received. But, of course, there are people who like said sprawling adaptation. Considering the heavy topics Grace had to deal with, though, the accomplishment of his feat was probably a relief.
(via IndieWire)
