Longest Movies Ever Made

Movie goers tend to dislike movies that run much over two hours, which is about as long as they can hold in the pee after drinking one of those huge concession stand drinks. That hasn't stopped some directors from making real bladder busters.

Logistics - Longest Movie Ever (5 weeks)

At 51,420 minutes, Logistics by Erika Magnusson and Daniel Andersson follows, in real time, in reverse order, the complete process of a pedometer from end sale, through shipping, back to its manufacturing in China. Much of the film is of a container ship sailing backwards across the oceans. Boredom Index 10 out of 10.

Empire - Longest Famous Movie (8 hours)

In 1964, Andy Worhol followed up his five hour snoozefest Sleep, showing a guy sleeping, with this film of the Empire State Building. That's it. A six and a half hour static shot of the top of the building shown in slow motion for a third of a day. Called an "influential cinematic work" by the Museum of Modern Art, it is listed as culturally significant by the Library of Congress. Boredom Index 10 out of 10.

Greed - Longest Famous Director Movie (8 hours)

Erich Von Stromheim's 1924 silent masterpiece. It tells the story of a woman who wins the lottery and becomes obsessed with money. She refuses to spend a penny forcing her and her husband to live in grinding poverty while she protects her horde. Her husband kills her for the money, flees to the desert where he ends up handcuffed to a corpse unable to reach either the money or water.

MGM executives were aghast at the length.  They cut the movie down to a still long for the time two hours and twenty minutes, butchering the story. The film flopped. Only eight people are known to have seen the now lost original film.

Silent film cameraman Karl Brown said in the 1980 TV documentary Hollywood that Stromheim developed an "insane desire to use his genius as a weapon." He would force studios to spend "millions and more millions until he had a beautiful monstrosity that is worthless except as a curiosity piece." He would prove his genius and have his vengeance against the world.

Lord of the Rings - Longest Great Movie (11 hours, 21 minutes)

Peter Jackson's magnus opus made almost $3 billion worldwide, garnered 17 Academy Awards and spawned another magnus, The Hobbit, that earned an additional $3 billion. There is nothing I can add except that Jackson outdid Stromheim by three hours and pulled it off to boot.