Interview: Mark Pellington on Going All the Way, Arlington Road’s lost ending and more!

We all had COVID-19 isolation projects. I learned to cook. Director Mark Pellington, on the other hand, decided to go back and radically recut his first movie, Going All the Way, which starred a young Ben Affleck, Rachel Weisz, Rose McGowan and Jeremy Davies. While enough of an indie hit that it launched Pellington into the big leagues, with his two follow-ups, Arlington Road and The Mothman Prophesies, earning cult status, the first cut of Going All the Way always nagged at Pellington.

Having made its debut at Sundance in 1997, Pellington and the distributor, Grammercy, made a streamlined version of the movie that earned some excellent reviews. However, twenty-five years later, Pellington felt the urge to revisit a film that never really satisfied him. In our exclusive interview, he discusses just how radical of a recut he did. He also discussed reaching out to Affleck, who still has fond memories of the movie, the ageless Rachel Weisz and others from the cast.

Of course, being a genre-focused site, I couldn’t help but pick his brain over a few of my favourite movies of his, including 1999’s masterpiece, Arlington Road. To my shock, he admits that the studio made him shoot an alternate “happy” ending to the film that – thankfully – no one ever intended to use. He also discussed the continuing legacy of The Mothman Prophecies and his hope to maybe do something similar somewhere down the line. All in all, it’s a terrific interview, and Pellington is always a lot of fun to talk to.