The thread about purchased videotapes made me think of this. When the movie “Wayne’s World” came out on video I bought a copy and one of the funniest jokes was ruined by a piece of post release editing. The scene is when Wayne goes into a guitar store, picks up a guitar to try out and begins to strum the first three or so notes of “Stairway to Heaven,” causing the store employee to grab the strings, point to a sign and blurt “Can’t you read?” The sign says “Absolutely NO ‘Stairway.’” Well in the video version, the notes are overdubbed with a generic rock-n-roll riff, ruining the punchline with the sign. I was stunned! Anyone know the story behind this change? I’m guessing someone got permission to use the music in the film but not video, or they didn’t get permission to use it at all (not likely) or could it be that someone just didn’t like being made fun of and had it nixed for the video release? Seems like such a harmless little gag, I can’t understand it.
I saw the movie Trading Places in the theater when it was first released. There is a scene in the movie when Dan Akroyd’s character dresses up as Santa Claus to crash a Christmas party at the office where he was just fired from. He realizes he’s not going to get his job back and gets drunk at the bar. After he leaves the party he’s standing on a street corner depressed. He hears a noise and he looks down and sees a dog pissing on his leg. As he looks up it starts to rain. He pulls a gun he had stolen out of his pocket and holds it to his head to kill himself. But he changes his mind and drops the gun.
Now I remember in the movie when he drops the gun, you hear it go off and then hear a sharp canine yipe, implying that the dog that pissed on him got hit. But I’ve since seen the movie on video and cable, and you don’t hear the dog. My guess is they took out the joke about the dog being shot to avoid offending animal lovers.
IIRC, I saw it in the theatre and heard the rock riff you described. After they showed the sign, I thought “That wasn’t ‘Stairway to Heaven!’” I still understood what they were trying to get at, though. Sounds like the Stairway notes were removed in some of the movie releases as well.
How bizarre! I had no idea a studio would even do that. Seems expensive, they must have been faced with quite a lawsuit or something.
Some videos these days have 10 or more minutes of boring commerical previews on them. Im happy I have a vcr that scans thru them automatically right to the beginning of the film.
Still, do you think it would be legal for a video store to copy their own store commercial over those boring commericals? What fun.
A couple of years ago I purchased the director’s cut of “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” and discovered that they had taken out one of my favorite scenes. There is a clever little song that the old man from “Mindmaker” sings about how his advertising genius can sell anything to anyone. It wasn’t there! I checked out the tape where I had recorded it off of TV (not a good recording, hence my purchase), and sure enough, the scene was there. I eventually had to dub the scene onto the end of the tape I bought. I can’t imagine why the director would have excised this.
I swear that the video version of Apartment Zero edited out scenes from the cinema version. Unfortunately, nobody besides me ever saw that movie in the cinema, so I have no one to verify this with.
Never regret what seemed like a good idea at the time.
What really pissed me off is my wife likes the band No Doubt (and did so long before their commercial success). Well we had seen a concert video for their most recent tour at Block Buster and rented it and liked it. When we purchased it from Boarders, all the “offensive” words had been bleeped out. We compared the cover boxes from the one we bought to the one we rented no differences to tell us we were getting a “censored” version. and of course since we opened it the bastards wouldn’t give us a refund.
To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
“The Keep” In the theater version, the Alberta Watson character looks in the mirror and notices that the Scott Glenn character does not cast a reflection. It’s missing in video.
“Weird Science.” In the theater version, at the end when Kelly LeBrock shows up and tells the gym class to “drop and give me 20,” the “Theme from Rocky” was played. On video, it’s the title song “Weird Science.”
“Firestarter.” There is a very disturbing scene where George C. Scott’s character is telling Martin Sheen’s what he plans to do with Drew Barrymore’s character just before he kills her. It’s gone in the video version.
Led Zeppelin is (or was) very finnicky about who they let use their music. The guy who directed “Dazed and Confused” wrote an article describing the lengthy process he went through in order to use “Rock and Roll” in D&C (which he ultimately wasn’t able to do).
I don’t know if this qualifies as being edited from the video version as I never saw it in the theatre, but the ads for the movie “Tapeheads” had a scene where one character turns to a bald guy at a bar and says “I want to lick your bald head and spank it.” It wasn’t in the video.
I also remember seeing one video of Pink Floyd’s The Wall with some scenes with an inflated looking Foetus in barbed wire, and then all version I have seen after than (newer tapes) did not have this scene. I seem to remember a few other items in “collage” shots missing.
Has anoyone else seen other versions of this film?
To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.