Friday, June 29, 2007

Frankly My Dear, I Don't Care for Flan

I get a kick out of watching broadcast versions of theatrical films and enjoying the myriad ways censors eliminate cursewords, etc., from the films' dialogue.

For example, in "Smokey and the Bandit," Jackie Gleason's character says the word "sum-bitch" about 400 times. In the broadcast version of the film, shown just about every other weekend on TBS, the censors thought it sounded better to have the character say "scum-bum." Trivia tidbit: The broadcast voice-over of Gleason's Buford T. Justice character was done by the guy who replaced Alan Reed as the voice of Fred Flintstone when Reed died in 1977.

Another one I love is in the George C. Scott film "Hardcore," where he plays a father searching for his runaway daughter who's working in the adult film industry. Anyway, Scott, posing as a casting director, conducts a series of interviews of porn stars until he finds one, a guy called Jim Sloan, who he thinks can help him find his daughter. In the theatrical version, the character introduces himself: "The name's Jim Sloan. Sometimes they call me Jizzum Jim." TV censors, in their infinite wisdom, thought it better to go without an overdub, so that, when you see it on American Movie Classics (does it not amaze everyone the SHIT that shows up on a channel purported to show CLASSICS?) you hear the character say, "The name's Jim Sloan. Sometimes they call me _________ Jim," where the blank is simply left blank (p.s. You can read the guy's lips clear as day).

So I ran across the broadcast version of "The Big Lebowski"last night, which features a scene where John Goodman destroys a car while yelling "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass, Larry." In its place, somebody thought it wise and, I might add, SENSICAL, to have Goodman say: "This is what happens when you FIGHT A STRANGER IN THE ALPS, Larry." Swear to god.

Posted by Unclejbird @ 5:21 AM