I noticed on the Simpsons tonight Krusty says
“And I once made out with a blow up doll”
But the closed caption read
“And I once made out with Brett Butler”
I wonder why the change and more importantly what is funnier. I don’t get the Butler reference at all
Not many people know this, but Brett Butler’s mom makes her living doing closed captioning.
I do know from a show on CNN once about their transcripts that their closed captioning typists use a program that, similar to some features on MS Word or some search engines, attempt to complete words for you. If you type in Tue then Tuesday will pop up, or if you type in psycho then a drop down with psychology psychologist psychological will pop up so you can select the right one. This, however, was for CC transcriptionists on live shows, meaning that it was impossible to just load a script for the program in (which I would assume, but don’t know, is what most sitcoms would do).
On the live programs it’s more complicated than the “suggestions” that MS Word might make as it seems to try and “guess” where the sentence is going and what verb you’re using. That’s why they’ll have the CC almost immediately during a live program but also why you’ll find some really weird non-sequiturs in the live broadcasts and “rush transcripts” of Anderson Cooper and Larry King and the like in which instead of saying “hybrid automobiles and wind turbines are growing trends in the greening of technology” it will say “hyper automobiles and wind turbans are growing trends in the grinning of technology”. Could be something like that.
Still, I can’t see how blow-up would prompt Brett Butler and they certainly don’t sound alike. I wonder if it’s from an earlier version of a script. Knowing that men, even aging comedy legends, have needs, it wouldn’t lower my respect of Krusty that he made out with a blow-up doll. Brett Butler, however… that’s just gross (though I did love her as Joy’s hypochondriac self-exonerating gambling addict mom on My Name is Earl).
My guess is that the line was “Brett Butler” until a late last minute redub which happened after the closed captioning was completed. Brett Butler seems to be taken from the wrong era of celebrities for Krusty to be involved with. 70’s Match Game panelist Brett Somers seems to be more up Krusty’s usual alley.
Unless they meant Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Brett Butler? 