400 individual stills and production photos to reconstruct the uncut version of Greed, the first time that images from the uncut version were publicly available. In 1999, Turner Entertainment decided to recreate, as closely as possible, the original version by combining the existing footage with over 650 still photographs of the lost scenes (many of which had been used in Weinberg's book), in accordance with an original continuity outline written by von Stroheim. All materials were provided by the Margaret Herrick Library. This restoration runs almost four hours. It was produced by film preservationist Rick Schmidlin and edited by Glenn Morgan. Schmidlin restored many characters and sub-plots from the original version. A new musical score was composed by Robert Israel. The reconstruction cost $100,000 to produce. Schmidlin called the finished product "a reconstruction of Von Stroheim's lost narrative." It premiered at the 1999 Telluride Film Festival and was later screened at the Venice Film Festival and the Pordenone Silent Film Festival before being aired on Turner Classic Movies on December 5, 1999. Film critic Todd McCarthy called the restored version of Greed a triumph. Roger Ebert called Greed a masterpiece and said that the restored Schmidlin cut illustrates the "prudish sensibilities [that] went into MGM's chop job." Rosenbaum praised the project, but claimed it could only be considered a "study version". The reconstruction won a special citation from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. Myths and misconceptions Von Stroheim was known to exaggerate events from his life and create myths about himself, such as his fictitious aristocratic origins and military record in Austria. He claimed that shortly after having moved to the US in the early 1910s, he had found a copy of McTeague in a motel in New York and had read it in one sitting. He also said that wanting to adapt the book inspired him to make a career in filmmaking. Georges Sadoul later stated that von Stroheim had first read the novel in 1914, while living in poverty in Los Angeles. Claims that von Stroheim's original cut was a completely unabridged version of McTeague are not accurate. Von Stroheim's 300-page script was almost as long as the original novel, but he rethought the entire story and invented new scenes, as well as extensively elaborating existing ones. In the Norris novel, McTeague's back story in Placer County and relationships with his father, mother and Potter were