I have always assumed that this is because a TV version actually costs money to make, so it is only done one time, to whatever the standards are at the time of the dubbing. When Comedy Central buys the thing ten years later for its afternoon place holder, they sure as hell aren’t gonna bother to go back and put in the things that you can say now.
I truly get a kick out of watching The Usual Suspects on TV. You know the scene where they’re in the lineup and they all have to read the line “Give me the keys, motherfucker”? Seeing Baldwin explode, screaming “Give me the motherloving keys, brotherhugger motherlubber lubalubalubalub!” is just frigging priceless.
I’m still pissed off about the TV version of Ferris Bueler’s Day Off.
Original: Cameron is so tight, if you shoved a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks, you’d have a diamond.
TV: Cameron is so tight, if you shoved a lump of coal in his fist, in two weeks, you’d have a diamond.
My fave from Brit TV in the mid-80s was a screening of “48 Hours”. The poster for the film over here, also used for the start and end of the commercial breaks, showed Nick Nolte extending his hand holding gun toward the viewer, and Eddie Murphy extending his hand and giving the viewer the finger. Meridian Broadcasting had not only editted out every single ‘fuck’, they had also carefully airbrushed out * Eddies middle finger from the poster. *
The Showcase network does the exact same thing in one of their commercials, except the humour is deliberate. As each character steps up to say the “gimme the keys, you fucking cocksucker” line, the words “fuzzy sock-sucker” are flatly dubbed in by an obviously different voice. The commercial ends with, “Real movies. Uncut. Only on Showcase.”
The “Raging Bull” one they do is pretty funny, too – “are you friends (instead of ‘fucking’) with my wife?”. Ah, Showcase – the way movies were meant to be seen.
I saw an edit version of The Matrix. No cursing, but all the scenes were included. Everyone still gets blown to shit, bullets everywhere and all the hand-to-hand action, but…no cussing. :rolleyes:
If you’re going to be concerned about a movie on a plane, which do you think is easier to control: what children will see (on any of the many screens) or what they might hear (on the headphones that have to be bought/rented)?
My favorite “motherfucker” substitution was in the tv version of the modern version of The Blob–it was “monkey fellow.” Monkey fellow?
It really pisses me off when they remove drug references. Like, if we pretend that drugs don’t exist, they’ll go away. Number one offense was back-masking over all the drug slang in 3rd Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life.” Hello, it’s a song about how drugs can fuck you up. But, jeepers, we can’t play a song about drugs on the radio! That’ll make all the kids run out and do crystal meth!
And then Disney plays the chorus over previews for the Tigger Movie. :rolleyes: