A co-worker and I were recently discussing a few of the more questionable dub-overs in the movie The Breakfast Club. During the scene where Judd Nelson’s character has his tirade about the abuse he receives from his father, he goes into a dialog (with himself) something to the effect of, “Fuck you dad,” “No, fuck you,” “NO, FUCK YOU,” and so on and so forth.
The question here is, on the networks (when they air the film), what word do they dub over “Fuck” with? I say that they use “forget,” and said co-worker says they use the word “flip.” Who is right? Or are we both way off?
Breakfast Club is a special movie because they use both “flip” and “forget”! Flip is used for the average, casual fuck you between the kids, and forget is used during that sequence.
The same dubbing sticks in my memory for another reason:
I saw this movie in it’s pitifully bowdlerized version on KVOS circa 1988-- For the first time. Obviously, you can’t watch something like that without mentally restoring the dialogue to it’s profane glory.
Naturally, hearing the line, “Eat my (Socks)!”,
I reasoned that:
The word must be obscene.
It must have some degree of homophony with “socks.”
I remember my confusion. “Eat my cock?” Unlikely. “Suck” would be more appropriate in that context. Why then, it could only be “Eat my shit!” Wow. How daring. Verily, I am tittilated.
Imagine how surprised I was to see the film on video a few years later, and find that the offending line was merely “Eat my shorts.”
THIS had to be dubbed over? How offensive is that? What, “shorts” might suggest “underpants” which, by extrapolation, may contain skid-marks? Socks are dirty without the peril of a possible scatological inference? (Twice removed?)
Thank God Bart Simpson came along the next year and took the fear out the phrase.
American TV is weird. You can flip through the channels and find “God” (used as an exclamation) being bleeped out, and while on another channel people are candidly talking about analingus. I don’t think it’s so much about “community standards” as what the sponsors expect.
Sponsors. There’s the main reason to move to the UK.
Don’t get me started.
Oh, my favorite example of this kind of crap isn’t dubbing over profanity.
In the opening scene of Born in East L.A., Cheech is asked by a friend what he’s going to do that evening after work. Cheech replies that he’s just going to sit around the house and “just get stoned.”
In the version they play on KTLA Ch. 5 here in LA, the last three words are dubbed over with the phrase “just say no.”
Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Caddyshack and Weird Science used to be my favorites for voice over on TV. Some memorable ones:
Sixteen Candles: “No more Yankee my wankee!” became “No more Yankee rum drinkee!”
Caddyshack: “Hey everybody! We’re all going to get laid!” became “Hey everybody! We’re all going to take a shower!”
Weird Science: “But first…lemme…butter your muffin!” became “But first…lemme…Better Know Ya, Muffin!” (This one was great b/c the looper voice was nowhere NEAR Bill Paxton’s southern accent, and also had to emote the comma and exclamation point to make it work).
However, (for those of you still with me and noticed the “used to be” <g>), Casino has them all beat. Has anyone seen Casino on USA? They used “freak” to cover up “fuck” the whole movie, but then left almost every scene intact.
Words can’t describe how hilarious it is to listen to Sharon Stone say, in the context of when she says it, “FREAK YOU, YOU FREAKIN’ MOTHER FREAKER!!!” My friends and I say that to each other all the time now…
Not a voice over, but a questionable beep…
KVOS again, played the great children’s show Worzel Gummedge with John Pertwee (of Dr. Who fame.)
There’s an episode where Worzel (a crotchety Scarecrow) takes a shortcut through a cow pasture to see his lady, Aunt Sally. He’s covered in muck, and Aunt Sally says, “Get away from me, you smell like a cowshed!” Apparently, it was misheard, because they beeped it, leaving “You smell like a cowsh–<beep!>” …leaving parents (and presumably children) wondering: Did I just hear that?"
At least some directors plan for this and either film the same scene over with slightly altered dialog, or they have the original cast record a second soundtrack for the “questionable” words and phrases. If they need to cut up a movie, it’s better to have the original people doing it than some censor cutting a phrase (or a whole scene). Last time I saw Blazing Saddles they cut almost the whole scene of the sherrif first arriving in town. They didn’t keep the “The sherrif is a n[DONG]” parts, or even the campfire scene with the baked beans.
My favorite has to be Pulp Fiction on broadcast TV. There’s Jules holding the gun at Brad’s head saying,
Say what again. I dare you. I double dare you silly-sucker!
…Real popular line with the boys, that one.
And I was up in Idaho a few years ago when I saw the Family Channel air Blazing Saddles. None of the sexual references made it through (Lily von Shhhh for Lily von Shtup; and of course no It’s twue! It’s twue!). But the funny thing was ALL of the racial comments were untouched. Up yours nigger! and …send a couple of niggers and all the rest came thrugh unscathed. Go figure…
thing i don’t get is why the stations even bother to broadcast shows that contain large amounts of swearing, shooting, and sexing. it defeats the purpose and makes them look silly.
but the fuuniest censorship of an R rated movie I ever saw was when a cable channel showed “Women in Love”.
There is a scene where Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestle in ancient Olympian style, in the nude, with genitals in brief view. Well, since it was not a premium channel the scene was mainly cut.
So instead we see Oliver Reed and Alan Bates strip off their clothing, cutting away before the trousers are dropped. And then a quick grapple of the arms, leading to a bear embrace. Then cut to Reed and Bates, still aparently nude, lying on the floor completely exausted.
If you never saw the film before, you would have thought they did something in between those cuts other than a bit of wrestling. The original fim had an R rating, but the sanitized version became X rated…
I read closed captions. They say BEEP or BLEEP, I once wrote a subject on that here. As recently as two weeks ago when I watched Big Brother 2 they didn’t censor some of it so I saw, ‘fuck’ & ‘shit’ in the captions, that was marvelous.
I’m happy that you all have fond memories of the atrocious over-dubbing in our classic American 80’s cinema, but let’s not forget the important thing here: I was right. Which makes my co-worker wrong.
So I leave with a hardy, “Wrong again, idiot.” He-he-he.