BETHEL – “Two nights for the arrest, and they cut it out?” exclaimed Roland “Butch” Pelletier of Auburn.

Pelletier had just exited the Telstar High School auditorium Saturday night after watching the 108-minute world premiere showing of “The 12 Dogs of Christmas.”

“I was working two nights for the arrest, and they cut it out,” he repeated, wide-eyed, to other cast members in the crowded hallway outside the auditorium.

Pelletier played the town clerk-sheriff of the movie’s fictional town of Doverville.

In “12 Dogs,” which was filmed in the Bethel area last winter and spring, Pelletier’s character had to arrest veteran actor John Billingsley.

Billingsley, who at that time was fresh off his success as supporting co-star to Denzel Washington in “Out of Time,” played the villainous Dogcatcher Doyle.

Born and raised in Rumford, Pelletier said he was disappointed that the scene had been edited out.

Producer Sean Covel of Los Angeles said after the movie that when all the scenes directed by Kieth Merrill were edited together, the film was two-and-a-half-hours long.

Several scenes were cut and others shortened to reduce the movie to 108 minutes.

“That was tough,” said Covel, who joked that he might need a bodyguard to get past the angry bit-part extras and cast members whose scenes for which they had worked so hard for so long ended up on the cutting room floor.

But, otherwise, Pelletier was excited about the movie, and seeing himself on the big screen.

“I thought it was a really good movie, especially the little girl with the puppy,” he said.

The little girl was 13-year-old actress Jordan-Claire Green, and the 15-week-old Brittany spaniel puppy-star whom she carried was “Gibson,” the pet of Pamela Frazell of Otisfield.

Frazell said Monday that Green and the puppy were inseparable during filming, and that Green cried when filming ended and she and Gibson parted.

Richard Begin of Bethel, who had several bit roles as an extra, was ecstatic that his scenes remained in the film.

“All the scenes I saw myself in, I was surprised,” he said, “because I spent more time looking for people I knew, and then, there I was, like the scene in Portland, where I walk by smoking a cigarette, I said, My God! That’s me!”

He also said he couldn’t get over the surprise of seeing himself on the big screen looking right at him on one scene where his character was sitting behind Mayor Nobel Doyle, played by veteran actor Richard Riehle.

“I think the movie is superb! It’s a movie that will be a classic, a real gem, and a real plus for the town of Bethel.

“This is one of those events that you will remember when you’re 85 and in a nursing home, and you pull out a faded newspaper article and show it to someone, and say, with pride, I was in this movie,'” Begin said.

Covel said the movie isn’t expected to be released until Dec. 2005, or later, depending on the whims of distributors.

“We’d love to put it in the theaters, but we know that no matter what, it will have distribution in Maine,” he said.

Wal-Mart has the DVD rights, Covel said, because the store sold more than 400,000 copies of the book, “The Twelve Dogs of Christmas,” that was written by Executive Producer Ken Kragen’s daughter Emma.

Like the book, the movie tells the story of a young boy who uses dogs to teach people about the meaning of Christmas during the Depression era.