Cassavetes. Falk suggested the scene at the end of the movie where Archie and Gus arrive home and divide up the gifts. A scene between Archie and Julie was improvised in a hotel room, with Cassavetes at the camera and no other crew present. Release Promotion On September 18, 1970, Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, ostensibly to promote the release of Husbands. However, they actively avoided almost every question Cavett asked about the film, and later admitted to drinking alcohol before the show. Running time edits Cassavetes cut around 85 minutes of footage from the film in order to shorten it to its contractual requirement of 140 minutes. After the film was released, distributor Columbia Pictures cut removed an additional 11 minutes from the film in response to negative reviews and audience walkouts. Critical reception Upon release, Husbands received disparate reviews from critics. Jay Cocks of Time wrote that "Husbands may be one of the best movies anyone will ever see. It is certainly the best movie anyone will ever live through." He described it as an important and great film, and as Cassavetes' finest work. In response, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "seldom has Time given a better review to a worse movie." Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, and wrote that it "shows an important director not merely failing, but not even understanding why." He also criticized the improvisations, writing: "There are long passages of dialogue in which the actors seem to be trying to think of something to say." Pauline Kael of The New Yorker described Husbands as "infantile and offensive." Writing for The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby called the film "unbearably long", and concluded of the three characters that "when it's all over, they are tired, but not much wiser—which is pretty much the sum and substance of Husbands." Tony Mastroianni of the Cleveland Press wrote that the "[film's] dialog consists of fragments, of exclamations, of three actors trying to upstage each other. What has been done is undisciplined and what has been given us is unselective. The camera runs and simply photographs everything that passes before it. The microphone listens. It is like a big budget home movie." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune included the film on his list of top 10 films of the year. In a retrospective assessment of