Runtime
The original shooting-script, completed in October 1981 after many delays and a writers' strike that happened between April and July of that year, was 317 pages in length. At the end of filming, Leone had about 8 to 10 hours' worth of footage. With his editor, Nino Baragli, Leone trimmed this down to almost 6 hours, and he originally wanted to release the film in two movies with three-hour parts. The producers refused (partly due to the commercial and critical failure of Bertolucci's two-part Novecento) and Leone was forced to further shorten the length of his film, resulting in a completed (i.e. scored, dubbed, edited, etc.) film of 229 minutes.
Many people (including film critic Richard Schickel) assume that the flying disc scene was part of a longer sequence. Roger Ebert stated that the purpose of the frisbee scene is to establish the 1960s timeframe.
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