“Too long" was the critique. “Too good” was closer to the truth, according to Maurice Hines, now 75. (Gregory died from liver cancer in 2003.) “There was some sort of controversy. Gregory and I—our scenes were really wonderful, and they wanted to cut some of our scenes out,” Maurice told Vanity Fair. “I don’t know who it was. I can’t say—because Richard Gere was wonderful to us, and he was great to work with. So I don’t think it was him. But they said that Gregory and I, our storyline was stronger, and we were stealing the movie—because we not only acted but we danced together. And it was too much.”

“They” wanted more emphasis on the white gangsters, hoping to capitalize on Coppola’s Godfather appeal. But who were “they”?

“The ‘they’ were the financiers, and Bob Evans, and the distributors, and the people that put in the money,” Coppola said—indicating Orion Pictures, which went bankrupt in 1995. Later in the conversation, he walked back his accusations against Evans. “Bob Evans himself always spoke of the beautiful talent which we saw, all these singers and dancers, in the most positive way,” he said. “It wasn't necessarily coming from Bob Evans.”

Evans, now 89, did not respond to email questions, but did send this statement, invoking his youth in Harlem, where his father had a dental practice: “There are three sides to every story… Yours, mine and the truth and none of us are lying. Memories served differently to everyone. My side is, I was brought up in Harlem as a young man for 10 years. I knew it well. It was an extraordinary canvas for an even more extraordinary film,” Evans wrote. “The Cotton Club Encore will remain one of our country‘s greatest works of cinema. It is a national treasure.”

One thing the Encore edition proves, without a doubt, is that the Williams brothers do steal the show. Their narrative is powerful in no small part because it was modeled on the actual relationship between the Hines brothers, who danced together as kids. They established themselves as a hit act on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and opened for Ella Fitzgerald—until Gregory set off for Hollywood, and Maurice focused on stage performing, directing and choreography. “I wouldn't say there were hard feelings. I understood what Gregory wanted. He wanted a different kind of career; he really did. And we had gotten as far as we could,” Maurice said.

When they converged again in The Cotton Club, it was a real reunion—and Coppola gave the duo freedom to tailor their own storyline, which gave it a nuance and texture that felt real, especially the tense moments. “We loved those scenes. They were not scripted,” Maurice recalled. “Most of them, [Coppola] had an idea and he told us, ‘Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to this point.’ But he said, ‘You're brothers. You broke up in real life, when you were the Hines brothers. So just do the scene.’”

When their storyline was pushed to the background, that rang true, too. In the early 1970s, the dancing Hines brothers were courted for a sitcom. Then the network balked. “We were big. We were,” said Maurice. “We almost got a television series—but at the time, that was way before The Jeffersons and all that. And they said people wouldn’t believe a black family on TV. So we didn’t get it.”

Experiences like this one braced the Hines brothers for their disappointing Cotton Club experience. “Being a black person in America, knowing the racism that still exists…we weren't surprised,” Maurice said. "We’re never surprised at white people when they want to stop black people. I hate to put it that way. It’s not everybody, but we’re never surprised when it happens. But we knew Francis was fighting for it, and we loved him, and believed in him. And whatever he wanted was fine with us.”