What is missing from the Laserdisk?

There's two extra verses of Piddle Twiddle and Resolve and an extra verse at the end of Lee's of Old Virginia. That's the bulk of what's missing.

There's also a transitional scene between the end of Yours Yours Yours when Adams falls asleep at Jefferson's stoop and when Franklin wakes him up the next morning. As it is in the theatrical and director's cut, you can see a man with a ladder walking towards a street lamp. The transitional scene shows the man lighting the lantern, then the scene fades into morning and the same man blows out the light. Franklin walks towards the Jefferson apartment, stops at a fruit stand and swipes a piece of fruit (I think). Then he walks towards the stoop where Adams sleeps and the scene continues as shown in the movie.

After the part where Franklin and Adams walk down the street together singing He Plays the Violin, there's an extended shot of Dr Hall towards the entrance of Independence Hall, whistling the tune of Cool Considerate Men, greeting McNair at the water pump before entering the Hall.

All this amounts to about 4 or 5 minutes, bringing the run time to around 170 minutes. The runtime on the laserdisc, 176 minutes I believe, is misleading. There's five minutes of overture and intermission music created solely for the laserdisc. The producers wanted to make it look like most movie musicals of the time, with an overture.

The strangest thing about the laserdisc edition is it includes several alternate takes in place of the theatrical takes. All inferior in my opinion. Why they did this, I don't know. Most of the scenes were restored to their original theatrical cuts in the Director's cut except for one, when Adams is trying to sway Chase to his side. Only parts of it, though. The line, "As chairman of the war committee I can state for a fact that the army has never been in better shape..." is different, then it reverts to the original take when Thompson reads the dispatch. Then it reverts to an alternate take during this exchange: "Wake up Franklin, you're going to New Brunswick." "Like hell I am what for?" "The whoring and the drinking." There are a few others, I think some may be on youtube.

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