Scene Unseen: Introduction

Film I was reading an article the other day in an old film magazine I had lying around which listed the top one hundred best scenes in film and while most were undoubted classics it was boringly predictable. The 'You Talkin' To Me?' scene from Taxi Driver, Linda Blair's head spinning around in The Excorcist and the 'No, I'm Your Father!' bit from The Empire Strikes Back. I've always been a fan of the other moments which seems insignificant but could open up other possibities. For example, what might have happened in Travis Brickle had taken his date to see the Clint Eastwood film, The Eiger Sanction which is playing in the cinema across the street from the porn cinema he's attending instead -- could a relationship have actually developed?

Also, why aren't deleted scenes included in these surveys? Although they don't appear in the final film, in some cases they can be just as exciting, funny or moving as anything the director, editor or studio thought we might want to see and through DVD we can enjoy them as they stand and ponder how different the film could have been if it had been included. 'Scene Unseen' is new occasional series which will highlight some of these moments at the fringes of some popular and not so popular films with the hope that the reader will want to look at them with a new perspective (and it'll give me a reason to visit parts of my DVD collection I haven't been to for a while).