“I really liked those scenes and I think everyone did a good job on them,” says the filmmaker, whose other credits include the horror movies Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose. “[But] they weren’t hard to cut. We tested the movie with and without them. It wasn’t just about the audience’s reaction, it was really how the movie felt. Pauline Kael used to always talk about the director needing to know where the audience wants to be, and at that point of the movie, the audience didn’t want to be jumping around, they wanted to stay with Strange, who’s on this very interesting, very personal, and very dramatic journey. The intrusion of those scenes was breaking up the soul of the movie in a way that just wasn’t necessary. We didn’t need it. When we removed them, we found that we lost very little, and we gained more power in the major arc of the character. So, it was a pretty easy choice in the end.”