I was going to make this a Top 5 Tuesday entry but had trouble coming up with 5 examples I could find video for. While I was at work today I started thinking about my favorite content edits made to movies so they can air on network TV stations. I found a few of the best ones I could think of on youtube, but not enough for a real Top 5 Tuesday, so I’ll have to delay that category’s resurrection another week.
I’ll begin with arguably the two most legendarily awful edits, the ones most frequently brought up in discussions on this topic.
The Big Lebowski: John Goodman takes a crowbar and breaks all of the windows on a nice sports car, yelling at its supposed owner, “You see what happens when you f*** a stranger in the a**?” But in TV edits, the line is heard as “You see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?”
Die Hard 2: Bruce Willis has just had a fight with a terrorist on the wing of a passenger jet about to take off, and the fight ended with Willis getting kicked off the wing and falling to the ground, but in the process he manages to open the fuel door/hatch thing (do planes really have those right there?) and as the plane escapes it leaves a trail of fuel behind it. Willis takes out his lighter, says his trademark “Yippie ki yay, motherf*****!” line and throws the lighter onto the line of fuel, which eventually gets to the plane just as its taking off and blows it up. But in the TV version, Bruce Willis says, “Yippie ki yay, Mr. Falcon”, and in a voice that is obviously not that of Willis.” High comedy.
The Usual Suspects: Career criminals (played by Kevin Pollack, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio Del Toro, Gabriel Byrne, and Kevin Spacey) are put together for a police lineup of suspects. They are told to read the line on the card they are passed. They all take their turns reading the line, “Hand me the keys, you f****** c*********!” In the TV version, however, they all say “Hand me the keys, you fairy godmother.” That’s one of the more inspired ones I’ve ever seen.
Pulp Fiction, as you can imagine, is nearly unrecognizable when it appears on edited TV stations. There’s not really one good clip, but there is a pretty good video compiling some of the more obvious edits.
One of my other favorites was a number of Samuel L. Jackson’s lines in Jackie Brown, such as “motherf*****” becoming “my friend”, or “motherfu**ing” becoming “mutual-funded”, but I haven’t found any videos of that. And it’s late and I need sleep. If anyone can think of other good ones, feel free to mention them, or post video links.
