Our mission to confiscate and destroy all VHS copies of the New Zealand edition of Big has remained successful. We have suppressed all attempts to leak the alternate ending to the public. We shall carry on in our mission until further orders are received.
They laughed at Einstein, they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Bozo the Clown
You can buy Big on VHS, DVD, and Blu Ray, and streaming. No one can buy The Newlywed Game in any format, as far as I can find.
Alternate endings have been a staple of bonus features as far back as VHS. Even if they suck and there’s a reason they never were used, and should be burned.
But somehow, Big has not only escaped this, all involved deny (and are lying or senile, apparently) that any alternate ending exists.
Fascinating.
Agree if exists probably from TV and NOT on a VCR release, and no, bonus features were NOT standard on 1989 VHS releases- not even close. Again, common to this day for films shown on TV to add or subtract scenes to fill a slot- not common for films on VHS to be other than the theatrical version. Penny Marshall not recalling a scene she may or may not have been present for is absolutely no different than Bob not recalling ‘in the ass’.
Wow, that’s a super uncharitable take on this thread. Doubly so given you clearly haven’t read it.
So, couple things.
Nobody is being called stupid for falsely remembering this scene. There is some (I think understandable) frustration with people reviving this very long, very old thread, by repeating arguments that have been dealt with, in detail, over and over and over again.
The people who remember this ending are not located only outside the US. Lots and lots of people inside the US remember this ending. Casting this as some sort of cultural snobbery is not justified.
It’s possible that Penny Marshall forgot or never knew that this alternative ending existed. It is, however, pretty unlikely - Big was arguably the biggest hit of her career. If she had been uncertain how to end the movie so far into production that she actually shot two different versions, I feel that’s something that’s unlikely to slip her mind. Similarly, the studio going behind her back to create a slightly different kind of schmaltz for the ending doesn’t really make sense, either - as you noted, Marshall was still a relative newcomer on the scene. Why bother going behind her back? Why not just tell her to shoot the new ending?
And whether Marshall was involved or not, why has nobody else remembered this scene? The “alternate ending to Big” meme is a big enough thing. Why has nobody who would have been in that scene - the girl playing young Susan, any of the other kids who were in that shot, whoever was directing it if it wasn’t Marshall, the cinematographer, the editor, the dozens of people doing lighting and props and costuming and hair and makeup. To say nothing of the executives who (maybe) demanded a reshoot, or who decided to okay a new edit with a different end, or the marketing types who decided that the TV market should get this different ending. And none of the TV markets kept any tapes of this alternate ending, or, apparently, ever showed it after ~the early 90s.
And yeah, the film first came out before DVDs were a thing. But you know what did come out when DVDs were a thing? The DVD release of Big,which included a “director’s cut” with 20 additional minutes. But not this supposed ending. The studio was able to put all that additional, unreleased content together, but couldn’t find the ending that was (allegedly) actually released to TV and some theaters? Not only couldn’t find the footage, but literally found no evidence at all that it ever existed?
Also, people have found a scene that’s exactly what they describe as the ending to Big, and it’s from a completely different movie from around the same time, that cribbed the same basic plot.
I also wanted to address this in particular:
Because it’s really interesting in the context of this particular discussion. There’s a term for this sort of mass false memory: The Mandela Effect, named specifically for the phenomenon of many people beng startled when they heard Nelson Mandela was being released from prison, because they had specific memories of reading about him dying there. So, I’m wondering what your take on that is, given that you think “proving something did not happen” is some sort of logical impossibility. Do you think the fact that Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994 does not prove conclusively that he did not die in prison in the '80s?
In the “It doesn’t DO anything” thread, what sources were being cited for the quote? What was happening when those sources were demonstrated to not contain that quote?
That’s the part where these things are different. In that thread, someone would say, “I think I read it in a Farley Mowat book,” and someone else would say, “Nope, doesn’t appear there,” and the first person would say, “Huh, I could have sworn it was there, guess I was wrong.”
In this thread, someone says, “I saw this ending to Big,” and when it’s shown that they could not have possibly seen it, instead double-down with increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories to explain why it must exist, despite there being literally no evidence at all except their hazy childhood memories.
Do you see the distinction, there? The issue isn’t “remembering something that isn’t true,” the issue is, “insisting your memories are true when they demonstrably are not.”
And note that the supposition in the first thread - that the phrase must have come from somewhere if so many people remember it - is born out by this thread. The ending people remember was not invented out of wholecloth. It was from a different, but deliberately very similar movie that came out around the same time, and was crafted specifically to cash in on the popularity of the Tom Hanks movie.
“14 Going on 30” was broadcast on March 6, 1988. “Big” was released on June 3, 1988. It makes an even stronger case for conflating the ending of 14Go30 for Big since people already had it in their memory when they saw Big.
Or, makes a strong case for Big trying that as an alternate ending when the original didn’t test well?
The second unit director (a real thing! someone besides the main director tasked with various shots, mainly ones that don’t require the lead actors, done without main director on set usually!) decides to film sixty seconds of the woman as a young girl at the window-door of the classroom, during the other classroom scenes. Hundreds of thousands of feet of footage, why would this shot have had special resonance with the actors at the time, for them to distinctly recall it decades later?
Many actors on any film don’t know for 100% certain the film they are shooting, let alone know the specific plot and ending. So a random twelve year old extra decades later not recalling she was told at the end of shooting day 62 to stand at the door and smile at Josh and wave is not some huge whole in the theory.
Find the NZ TV version from 1989, then you have your definitive proof, either way. Start a kickstarter to fund a documentary film about the search for the lost ending.
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I have VHS tapes with bonus features. Were they standard? No, but they exist. Anyway, that doesn’t say anything about Big, I was using it as an example of the public’s appetite for bonus features.
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You don’t understand how Hollywood works. if someone other than Marshall directed part of Big, they’d get a credit. Even if she doesn’t get final cut, she gets director’s credit, and unauthorized people doing directing means grievances with the Director’s Guild. Even if she loses, it is on record. And she wouldn’t forget.
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If the alternate ending was audience tested, that means there was a finished film, and Marshall would have watched it. She wouldn’t forget
Can you cite any examples of television networks independently adding previously unreleased content to Hollywood movies for their broadcast?
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t just Penny Marshall. Elizabeth Perkins (Susan) is also on record denying any alternative ending. You would know that if you bothered reading the thread.
I’m sure massive, collective amnesia by everyone involved in the making of Big is the logical answer to this mystery. :rolleyes:
Actually I do, you clearly do not- do a search for ‘second unit director’, and you’ll see not one thing you said above is correct. We aren’t talking about Edward Norton reworking American History X. We’d be talking about someone told to find three minutes of already shot footage to add to the TV broadcast to fill the time slot. And we aren’t talking change to the theatrical release, but to a showing on TV in NZ, which directors generally have no say about- that’s like thinking Scorsese picked out what alternate words to use instead of the swearing when Goodfellas airs on TNT.
Acutally I have read the thread now, and you clearly have no idea how movies work- why in the world would Perkins have any insight whatsoever regarding a scene that she would not have been present for anyway? You think they ran every single thing they did by an actor?
I don’t think the NZ TV Stations would be given access to unused scenes to create their own edits, that would have come from elsewhere.
The onus on the ones claiming it exists, not the one claiming it doesn’t.
And trust me, even if someone went to NZ, found someone who had a copy, watched it, saw there was no alternate ending, someone else would say “Well, they obviously aired more than one version.”
That is crazy talk. :eek: I was there, man!
So this is how movies work: Absolutely nobody who works on the film talks to anyone else working on the film. Nobody knows what anyone else is doing except for their part. The director is unaware of scenes being filmed and edited, even after the fact. Actors work on films but never add their roles to their resumes if they don’t appear in the final cut. Gee, tell us how movies work.
Can you give a single example of tv stations adding previously unreleased content to Hollywood films?
as I said, I don’t know the correct answer, or care.
My only presence here was to discredit the notion, posited by people who clearly have no idea how films are made, that a novice director and two novice lead actors not recalling a scene, possibly shot by the second unit with none of them present, means said scene 100% does not exist and could not possibly have made its way into a TV version of a film. It is not implausible in the least. That is all- hopefully someone with insight into filmmaking will come along and confirm- does Godard still post here?
Not a “strong” case, no. A weak case, and again, one that is totally swamped by all the negative evidence against this ever having happened.
Yeah, we know about second unit directors. Second unit directors do not generally get to make spur-of-the-moment casting decisions like that. And even if he did, there are so many, many more steps between taking the shot and getting it on a screen in front of the public that it’s not credible that nobody involved with the production of this movie would remember this scene was not only shot, but edited, scored, signed off by legal, and entered into the distribution channel. Nobody remembers doing this. Nobody can find any documentation that this was ever done.
It’s not just the actors. It’s the director. And the assistant directors. And the editor. And the composer. And the producers. And the studio archivists. There’s thousands of people who were directly involved in the creation and distribution of this movie, who say this ending doesn’t exist.
There is no “NZ TV version from 1989.” New Zealand got exactly the same movie everyone else did. The idea that there’s a different version for New Zealand is something invented by people who won’t let this idea go, to try to justify why there’s no evidence that this cut of the movie ever existed. The people who need to be finding proof here are the people making the extraordinary claim: that New Zealand got a special version of a highly popular, very successful movie that literally nobody who was actually involved, at any level, in making the movie remembers.
You have not remotely established any particular knowledge or expertise in film making in this thread.
Pretty much the opposite, to be honest.
Yes, I said improbable if not impossible NZ TV was given access to the unused reels of footage for Big and given carte blanche to create their own TV edit- that would have been done at a higher level.
If not done as part of the original script, it would have been just a random extra in the class tasked with being the younger Perkins. Since it wasn’t in the final film, she would not have a screen credit as young Perkins, just the credit as an extra if anything.
Actually I’ve seen Day For Night multiple times, and that alone qualifies as an “expert” in this thread, based on comments like ‘actor X, who wasn’t on set that day, or in the scene at all, doesn’t recall it happening, so that’s proof it didn’t happen’. etc.