I learned earlier today (and I’m told that some kind of statement will be forthcoming) that the currently running New York Film Festival (9.27 to 10.13) won’t be presenting a secret screening this year. As I hear it, the festival’s programming director Kent Jones had hoped to arrange a special showing of Martin Scorsese‘s Wolf of Wall Street, but that dream went south when a elephant-sized cut delivered by Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker failed to satisfy Paramount Pictures, the film’s distributor, necessitating their return to the editing room. For whatever reason no other unreleased film quite fit the bill. A fair-sized portion of Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel was viewed but it’s nowhere close to being completed. David O. Russell‘s American Hustle seemed like a good candidate but it’s currently going through a fine-tuning process via research screenings and isn’t quite ready to be shown. I’m guessing that the NYFF statement will say something like “with sad regret we’ve decided not to have a NY Film Festival secret screening this year but we’re having a great festival regardless,” etc.