# Changed to a Happy Ending **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 10, 2015, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686 "2015-03-10T13:27:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/101 "2015-03-11T17:57:49Z")
The original ending of _Clerks_:[spoiler]A robber walks into the convenience and shoots Dante. I think Kevin Smith has said that when he originally wrote the script, he felt he needed some kind of ending to the story. The shooting scene was filmed (and is included as a DVD bonus) but was removed from the movie for its release. Smith has since said he feels this made for a better movie. He felt the idea that Dante would be doing it all over again the next day made a better point than his death would have. And it left open the possibility of sequels.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/102 "2015-03-11T18:01:39Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > The shark doesn’t “leave.” Quint kills it, but since Quint is tangled up in the line connected to the harpoon, he gets dragged to the bottom by the sinking, dead shark, and drowns. Brody is the only survivor. > > Hooper in the book is a studly blond WASP, nothing at all like Richard Dreyfuss. > > As you say, this is one case in which the movie was better than the book in almost every way. Last month I was between books and picked up _The Deep_ where it had been sitting on the shelf as a possibility. Reacquainted myself with the fact that Peter Benchley’s writing is not something I like. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/103 "2015-03-11T18:06:24Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > This year’s _Into the Woods_ ditched several critical deaths and defanged the two (three if you count the Wolf) they did leave intact. In doing so, they completely thwarted the pacing and character motivation, and undermined every thematic element that made the story interesting. Some stage productions of _Into the Woods_ - especially done by middle schools, where multiple-act shows are too much of a strain on the kids - only do the first act, which ends right after Cinderella’s wedding. Also, a number of scripts submitted for the movie version of _Friday Night Lights_ were rejected _because_ they tried to turn it into a “happy ending” where the team wins the state championship (in the book, they lose the championship game; in real life, they lose in the semi-finals, but the team that beat them and went on to win the championship game was later disqualified for having players from outside of its school district). ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/104 "2015-03-11T19:06:21Z")
One of the most famous “tacked-on happy endings” in history comes from Charles Dickens’ **Great Expectations**. In brief, Pip is a wayward blacksmith’s ward who is smitten by Estella - a Victorian era version of Kim Kardashian. After Pip receives a very unexpected financial windfall, he sets about remaking himself into the type of upper-class gentleman he hopes Estella might be interested in marrying. Alas, Estella is a castrating bitch who chooses to marry some other poor schmuck and breezily lets Pip know that she intends to fuck over any guy unlucky enough to get in her way. And so midway through the story, Pip’s true love saunters off into the sunset. (NOTE: This is a very cursory summary of the plot; lots of other things happen as well.) Anyway, the last chapter of the book has Pip visiting his old foster dad Joe Sedley and Joe’s new family (his second wife and their young son Joe Jr) for X-mas. On X-mas day, Pip takes Joe Jr out on the town. A horse-drawn carriage passes them; unbeknownst to Pip, the carriage’s passenger is Estella. She’s had a hard life since seeing Pip last - she’s widowed, alone and unhappy AND apparently longing to be reunited with Pip. Alas, she sees Pip and Joe Jr, assumes Joe Jr is Pip’s son (and hence, assumes Pip is married) and just passes by him without stopping. The End. The Victorian public apparently HATED that ending, so Dickens obliged by writing an epilogue chapter: Pip visits the site of old Miss Haivsham’s house (Miss Havisham was the bitter old maid who raised Estella). Estella is there and they get to have the reunion after all. Dickens coyly didn’t exactly say that Pip and Estella get together, but strongly implies it. (He got to have his cake and eat it too!) ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/105 "2015-03-11T19:08:25Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > AFAIK, the elder Chaney never played a wolfman or werewolf. > > In the Universal films, Henry Hull first played a werewolf in 1935. Hull didn’t want to sit still for the full makeup that makeup diva Jack Pierce came up with (he’d used something very much like it in 1932’s **island of Lost Souls** on Bela Lugosi’s Speaker of the Law), so they had to settle for an abbreviated version. > > They did a reboot, essentially, in 1941, I which Lon Chaney Jr. played the titular Wolfman\*, in full wolfman makeup. Screenwriter Curt Siodmak wanted it left up in the air as to whether he really WAS changing into a wolfman, with the makeup only visible near the end when you had a Point-of-View shot of him seeing himself reflected in a pool of water as The Wolfman. But the powers That Be decided that, yep, he really was changing into a real Wolfman, and cinematic history was born\*\*. Chaney Jr. went on to play the beast in four more films for Universal, IIRC. After 1942 or so, the younger Chaney dropped the “Junior,” and was generally billed simply as “Lon Chaney.” Both versions of the name in Warren Zevon’s lyrics could be accurate, depending on which Wolf Man film you’re looking at. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/106 "2015-03-11T20:27:57Z")
> [@Don\_Draper](#): > > One of the most famous “tacked-on happy endings” in history comes from Charles Dickens’ **Great Expectations**. I think the most famous of the “tacked on Happy Endings” occurs in John Gay’s **The Beggar’s Opera** (1728). I’m lazy, so I’ll quote Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > …They plead with their fathers for Macheath’s life. However, Macheath now finds that four more pregnant women each claim him as their husband. He declares that he is ready to be hanged. The narrator (the Beggar), notes that although in a properly moral ending Macheath and the other villains would be hanged, the audience demands a happy ending, and so Macheath is reprieved, and all are invited to a dance of celebration, to celebrate his wedding to Polly. Of course, the very tacked-on nature of the “Happy Ending” is the point – Gay was making fun of the public desire for Happy Endings. (There’s also the fact that MacHeath ends up married to one of 6 possible pregnant women. For him, being hanged might actually be the Happiest of Endings. But it’s denied him by audience preference.) > **[The Beggar's Opera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beggar%27s_Opera)** > > The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today. Ballad operas were satiric musical plays that used some of the conventions of opera, but without recitative. The lyrics of the airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and fol... When Bertold Brecht rewrote this as **the Threepenny Opera** (the modern musical that gave us the song “Mack the Knife”), he kept the same basic plot, including the ludicrous Happy Ending. > **[The Threepenny Opera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threepenny_Opera)** > > The Threepenny Opera\[a\] (Die Dreigroschenoper \[diː dʁaɪˈɡʁɔʃn̩ˌʔoːpɐ\]) is a 1928 German "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, contribution Hauptmann might have made to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author. > The work offers a socialist critique of the capital... Of course, no one ever had a version where Macheath ended up being hanged, so this entry doesn’t belong in this thread, except as a historical case commenting on those Happy Endings. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/107 "2015-03-11T20:38:44Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > The shark doesn’t “leave.” Quint kills it, but since Quint is tangled up in the line connected to the harpoon, he gets dragged to the bottom by the sinking, dead shark, and drowns. Brody is the only survivor. Thanks for correcting my memory about the shark. The only reason I flipped to the end (as opposed to just giving up on the book altogether) was because Hooper’s survival in the movie always felt tacked-on, like he was originally not supposed to survive, and I was curious to see if he survived in the book. Curiously, Hooper doesn’t appear in any of the _Jaws_ sequels. In _Jaws II_, they say that he is on a research vessel in the Antarctic, and thus is unavailable. I’m pretty sure he was never mentioned again in the later sequels. ETA: I would love to have seen this addressed in one of the sequels. Imagine if _Jaws III_ began with Hooper on the ship in the antarctic. He reaches down towards the water to perform some trivial task (like retrieving a floating buoy), when suddenly the shark grabs his hand and drags him under. One of his shipmates, who had his back turned while this happens, turns around to ask Hooper aquesting, and is perplexed to see him gone. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/108 "2015-03-11T20:38:58Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#): > > Some stage productions of _Into the Woods_ - especially done by middle schools, where multiple-act shows are too much of a strain on the kids - only do the first act, which ends right after Cinderella’s wedding. Wow. Really? I mean, I wouldn’t expect a middle school to put it on at all, what with the …this… and the …that… but if you’re going to do it, you couldn’t betray the vision of the play more than that if you wanted to. Do you know of any middle schools that put on the first act of _Into the Woods_? ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/109 "2015-03-11T20:50:06Z")
While it isn’t exactly a “happy ending”, I don’t think any movie studio has had the balls to make “I Am Legend” exactly as the book dictates. Too bad, too, because it’s one of my favorite books. I agree about those Oz books, including Wicked. The sequels are increasingly worse. I am sorry I ever bought them. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/110 "2015-03-11T20:52:02Z")
> [@bup](#): > > Wow. Really? I mean, I wouldn’t expect a middle school to put it on at all, what with the …this… and the …that… but if you’re going to do it, you couldn’t betray the vision of the play more than that if you wanted to. > > Do you know of any middle schools that put on the first act of _Into the Woods_? I don’t know of anyone who has actually performed it, but the “Junior” version of the show is [available](http://www.mtishows.com/show_detail.asp?showid=000189). Note that in the Synopsis of that listing, it indicates the removal of particular roles, songs, and that all of Act II is cut. Many shows have “Junior” versions, particularly for elementary or middle schools, that simplify the story, cut certain songs, and generally make the show shorter or easier to present. If you see such a show, it’s not some middle school drama teacher arrogantly rewriting Sondheim. It’s an actual licensed version of the show aimed at younger performers. (Never mind that the licensing is currently restricted–that’s beside the point!) ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/111 "2015-03-11T21:26:54Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > While it isn’t exactly a “happy ending”, I don’t think any movie studio has had the balls to make “I Am Legend” exactly as the book dictates. Too bad, too, because it’s one of my favorite books. > > . Well, the most faithful film version was the Italian flick \*\*\*The Last Man on Earth \*\*\*(starring Vincent Price), which does have Price killed by the “civilized” vampires. And the vampires (or whatever they are) do kill Charlton Heston in _ **The Omega Man.** _ So, Robert Neville doesn’t generally get to live happily ever after. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/112 "2015-03-11T21:30:13Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > Thanks for correcting my memory about the shark. The only reason I flipped to the end (as opposed to just giving up on the book altogether) was because Hooper’s survival in the movie always felt tacked-on, like he was originally not supposed to survive, and I was curious to see if he survived in the book. > > Curiously, Hooper doesn’t appear in any of the _Jaws_ sequels. In _Jaws II_, they say that he is on a research vessel in the Antarctic, and thus is unavailable. I’m pretty sure he was never mentioned again in the later sequels. > > ETA: I would love to have seen this addressed in one of the sequels. Imagine if _Jaws III_ began with Hooper on the ship in the antarctic. He reaches down towards the water to perform some trivial task (like retrieving a floating buoy), when suddenly the shark grabs his hand and drags him under. One of his shipmates, who had his back turned while this happens, turns around to ask Hooper aquesting, and is perplexed to see him gone. 😃 Well, I think Richard Dreyfuss has always been a buddy of Spielberg, who regarded Dreyfuss as his alter ego (they worked together again in\*\*\* Always \*\*\*and _ **Close Encounters** _). Dreyfuss was offered more interesting roles after\*\*\* Jaws\*\*\*, and wasn’t going to do a sequel unless Spielberg was involved and had something new and different in mind. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2015, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/113 "2015-03-11T23:41:31Z")
I was going to mention the movie version of the musical stage play Little Shop of Horrors. Because they did test it and then audiences didnt’ like the downer ending but they felt that a stage audience were OK with it because the actors come out for curtain call. (smiling) They put ‘curtain calls’ in the credits (showing the actors on screen with their names) but that didn’t work. One of my least favorites is the changed by test audience ending to Fatal Attraction. In the release version the evil Glenn Close gets killed by the Mrs. of the cheating husband. The audiences felt she (the Mrs.) needed some vengeance on Glenn Close. Originally Close framed Michael Douglas for her murder. (she kills herself) Much better ending IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/114 "2015-03-12T00:03:51Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Yeah, the ending of the book wasn’t so much sad as confused. By the time it ended I couldn’t care less about the characters because I didn’t even understand what was going on by that point. The play at least made the story make sense. It could have been happy or sad, but it would have been an improvement. Oh, sweet zombie Jesus, someone who agrees with me. I read the book upon the recommendation of a friend (who managed to remain a friend, even after), and I loathed it. Long, pointless, and worst of all, _boring_. The back of the book mentioned that Boq (later the Tin Man) was a survivor of domestic violence, which doesn’t even appear in the novel. I actually started a [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=318907) about it after I read it. Though, I admit, I was a lot kinder to it right after I read it than I have been with the passage of time. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/115 "2015-03-12T00:30:04Z")
> [@bup](#): > > Wow. Really? I mean, I wouldn’t expect a middle school to put it on at all, what with the …this… and the …that… but if you’re going to do it, you couldn’t betray the vision of the play more than that if you wanted to. > > Do you know of any middle schools that put on the first act of _Into the Woods_? Not a Middle School, but in our town the high school put on a version of the play. I’m not familiar with the original, so I don’t know how faithful it is, but from what I’m reading, I suspect it was somewhat changed. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/116 "2015-03-12T01:52:16Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > The original script of _Chinatown_ had a happy ending. Roman Polanski changed it over writer Robert Towne’s strenuous objections. Towne was just wrong. The ending to the movie is perfect. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/117 "2015-03-12T05:25:27Z")
The 1937 film version of _Lost Horizon_ changed the ending. The book ended with men wondering if Conway ever made it back to Shangri-La. The movie ends with him getting there. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/118 "2015-03-12T05:37:16Z")
I like what \* Mad \* Magazine said about it: See the jolly client. [Big ugly bald man with a stupid grin] He can hardly speak English. He can hardly write his name. Yet he re-writes TV scripts. Re-write, re-write, re-write. Why do you re-write TV scripts, jolly client? “Because I do not like sad endings; Because I only like happy endings.” Someday, a TV writer will shoot the jolly client. Right in his jolly gut. What a happy ending THAT will be! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/119 "2015-03-12T05:53:56Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > I like what \* Mad \* Magazine said about it: > > See the jolly client. [Big ugly bald man with a stupid grin] > He can hardly speak English. > He can hardly write his name. > Yet he re-writes TV scripts. > Re-write, re-write, re-write. > Why do you re-write TV scripts, jolly client? > “Because I do not like sad endings; > Because I only like happy endings.” > Someday, a TV writer will shoot the jolly client. > Right in his jolly gut. > What a happy ending THAT will be! 😃 On a tangential note, TV Tropes uses this (along with the illustration) for its page on [Executive Meddling](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExecutiveMeddling). ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2015, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686/120 "2015-03-12T06:26:01Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > On a tangential note, TV Tropes uses this (along with the illustration) for its page on [Executive Meddling](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExecutiveMeddling). Isn’t that the most repulsive picture you’ve ever seen? 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changed-to-a-happy-ending/714686.md?page=7)