I watched this over the weekend. The ending has the kid returning home in his oversized suit, followed by him and his friend chatting as they roll on down the street, and the credits roll on down the screen.
The evidence is not real strong for the alternate ending, but inconclusive, and mostly points at a different New Zealand version.
I can. Reading something like that (it’s repeated often online) can trigger a conflated memory with the other movie. There are lots of examples of people confusing two things triggered by someone else’s recollection.
I’m gonna have to go with if it’s not on youtube it doesn’t exist. With a film that popular, somebody would have dug up the NZ vhs by now and put it online.
There has been at least one other thread on this topic after the original (presuming this is the original original), and we have discussed how false memories are formed there and in other threads on this board. This is exactly the kind of situation where people misremember things. For the people who claim they are sure their memories are correct because they remember it, gosh-darn-it: sorry, that’s just not how memories work. There’s no such thing as a pure memory. Every time you revisit a memory you rewrite it. Go read up on Elizabeth Loftus’ studies on memory if you are unconvinced.
i remember that ending too. i thought i was crazy. i knew she went back too, i could not figure out why they changed the ending.
I only remember the walking down the street ending, in AUS and only seeing it on tv. Last time it was aired they took the liberty of cutting the scene with a breast. I thought the NZ ending was the one where he meets up with a sheep.
Maybe Zoltar is deciding which ending is most suitable for us to see.
In fact, a large part of the time (and perhaps a majority of the time) when someone asks us about a movie that they vaguely remember and want to know the title of, they’re mixing together a couple of different movies or TV shows. The most interesting thing for me is the title 14 Going on 30. That’s the 1988 film in which the girl decides to join the guy and become young, as opposed to the 1988 film Big, where she decides not to. Confusingly, there’s also a 2004 film 13 Going on 30, in which a 13-year-old girl goes forward in time (not just ages in a moment as in the other films, but actually goes forward in time) to when she is 30. Even more confusingly, either this thread has been going on for ten years or else back in 2002 I wished that it was ten years later.
I live in the UK and I have seen the ending with Susan in the classroom on UK TV as a kid, some 15-20 years ago.
It was out there at one point people and I too cant find anyone else apart from my brother who gas seen it.
It looks to me as if the movie referenced in the YouTube clip is being mushed together in peoples’ minds with the ending of “Big.” We’re talking about two movies from the same time frame with very similar plots, and “14 Going on 30” exactly matches the supposed alternate ending of “Big” while no one can point to an authoritative reference to any alternate ending for the Hanks movie. I’d say case closed - and remember that IMDb is not much more than a moderated wiki when it comes to the ‘fun stuff’ entries.
Evidence is that you didn’t.
Here’s the clip from “14 going on 30” linked to earlier in the thread - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6783tkwbZw0
You’ve confused the two movies in your memory, which is surprisingly common and easy to do.
No sorry but I have not, it was Big.
I’ve never even seen 14 going on 30.
When I saw it being refered to in this post, I thought you’d all got confused with 13 going on 30 with Jennifer Garnier, ha ha.
No, it wasn’t.
My sister swore up and down, for years, that she had seen a Castle Dracula movie that had three specific characteristics - IIRC, it was Christopher Lee in the title role, had a signature scene in the middle and ended with particular unusual scene. With the help of some film experts, I located the TWO films she was conflating - one starring Lee and having the middle scene, the other starring someone else and having the ending scene. She insists to this day that there is a third film, somehow unlisted in Lee’s repertoire and unknown to Castle or Dracula film aficionados, that has both scenes in it.
It’s easy to mix up two similar movies. I suggest that April1704 caught the ending of “14 Going on 30” and watched it assuming it was “Big.”
Can’t win can I?
For whats its worth though I know what I saw and it was Big. Like an earlier post I remember thinking where she was going to live.
Alternative Straight Dope discussion on this topic: What happened to the alternate ending to Big? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
You’re entitled to your memory/opinion.
For the rest of us, it’s a case of Occam’s Razor: either a very limited number of people saw “Big” with a radically different ending, a version that has no confirmation of its existence or shooting;
or,
Some number of people are thinking of the ending of “13 Going on 30” - which was made at almost the same time, probably alternated with TV showings of “Big” through the 1990s, has almost the same story, and visually makes a very good match with “Big” - and honestly believing it belongs to the latter film.
About the only way to ever prove the first case would be to get a member of the cast or crew to say the schoolroom ending had been filmed.
April1704, I know you don’t like this, but people conflate things in memory all the time. Everybody does it. Human memories don’t work the way that most people think. Your memory is not a movie camera exactly recording events. It’s a big box where many things are thrown together randomly. It’s easily possible for things to get tangled together, and it gets more likely the longer ago that the events happened.
Incidentally, I remember you very well from when I lived in the U.K. back in 1987 through 1990. We were very good friends. In fact, I was madly in love with you. I never got anywhere with you though. I was so convinced that I had a chance with you. You probably thought of me as a stalker.
Or . . . have I got you confused with somebody else? My memory does that to me. I throw together people in my mind and can’t straighten out which events happened to which people. Oh, well, we all do that.
You’d think that some member of the cast or crew of Big might recall shooting that scene.
No one has seen the alternate ending, becuse it doesn’t exist.
Easy tiger, them’s fighten’ words - I actually thought Bosom Buddies was hilarious. Very much under-rated.
I was always surprised Peter Scolari didn’t make it bigger than he did. I mean, I guess he’s best known for the Newhart show, but other than that the only big movie I recall him being in was the voice of one of the characters in The Polar Express (also with Tom Hanks - interesting that as far as I know it’s the only movie they’ve worked together on. Maybe they weren’t bosom buddies?)
But I certainly didn’t expect Hanks to end up being the biggest box-office star of all time…
Ok ok, lets just agree to disagree.
I may be wrong but I am convinced otherwise, ha ha.
I do agree however that it is strange that it isn’t on YouTube, you think it would be.