Scenes That Were (Thankfully) Cut From Great Films
No matter how much we love a movie, most of us don't ever read the screenplay -- after all, isn't the whole point of going to the movies to avoid reading? (Unless you like foreign films, like some America-hating commie.)
Well, it turns out there's a lot of insanity hidden in the scripts for even the best movies. This is probably because in the days before screenwriting software, it was easier to just leave some ridiculous bullshit scene in than try to go through the torture of manually fixing it with a typewriter. Ridiculous bullshit scenes like ...
Ferris Bueller's Day Off Had A Bizarre Strip Club Scene
Ferris Bueller: He's the lovable scamp who betrays the sympathies of an entire school so he can gorge himself in fancy restaurants, act like a jackass on parade floats, and generally drive his best friend closer and closer to the brink of suicide. Nevertheless, it's a beloved treasure of a movie, inspiring a sitcom, commercials, and a generation of kids to abandon their education for no good reason.
The Script:
The screenplay is pretty close to the final movie, with tiny exceptions like Ferris stealing money from his dad and Charlie Sheen's character driving the entire narrative. However, since John Hughes banged the script out in less time than it took to write this article you're reading, there were understandably some kinks to work out -- such as the scene where Ferris visits a fucking strip club, jumps on stage, and pulls off the most boner-killing Elvis impersonation ever written.
Of course, it may not have felt like a crazy tonal shift, thanks to the magic of editing:
Wait, is this a script or free association poetry?
It's a pretty weird deviation to go from the "live life to its fullest" ethos of visiting the Sears Tower and touring the Art Institute of Chicago to the "live life spending a sunny day inside a dank, neon-filled pit of debauchery" ethos of this scene. Presumably, Ferris thought it was a necessary detour after Cameron nearly burst a blood vessel trying to mentally undress the women in a Seurat painting.
It's basically this, but with "Cherry Pie" playing in the background.
Understandably, Ferris' girlfriend, Sloane, is pretty unimpressed by her boyfriend taking her to a nudie bar, remarking that she's "losing respect for by the bucket." (Of ... what?) Then, like the true douchebag we all secretly know he is, Ferris tries to intellectualize the experience, theorizing that the only reason someone would become a stripper is if they experienced some kind of tragedy, like losing a child. Because, as we all know, one of the five stages of grief is a fervent desire to dance naked for dollar bills.
Also, cool it with the tramp-shaming, Sloane.
Then, to top it all off, Ferris once again decides to hop on-stage -- and, in a scene more fantastic than anything in Lord Of The Rings, he proceeds to lip-sync an Elvis song instead of being tackled to the ground by a dozen bouncers.
"Then he's torn apart by horny truckers. THE END."
Because if any business is totally cool with teenage boys ignoring the rules, it's strip clubs, right?
Tron Featured Computer Programs Having Sex
Tron is the Disney movie that taught America how computers work: There are tiny versions of you and your friends playing Olympic-like games in a laser-tag-themed rave inside each one. That's just science.
This is why it's important to cover your webcam while you change clothes.
The Script:
One question hopefully no one asks while watching Tron is whether or not these computer sprites are boning each other between light cycle races. Well, here's the answer anyway: They absolutely are.
In a scene that was deleted and then hopefully taken to the woods and buried, the titular character and his romantic interest, Yori, go back to her apartment for a little menage a Tron. There's even some gross double-entendre that stops just short of Yori saying, "I want a hard drive, not a floppy disc."
The games he refers to are the Japanese "visual novels" Jeff Bridges installed on his computer.
Irresponsibly, there's no talk about using protection, but then again this was before Norton Antivirus was invented. And it's a Disney movie, so they have sex not via actual penetration but rather some kind of glowing cyber-groping where they try to "touch the other's entire body at once" until they're "enveloped in the cloud of stars." It's basically what it would be like if David Bowie wrote a song about dry-humping.
"Cloud of stars" is the nicest euphemism for jizz we've ever heard.
Disney actually filmed a less filthy version of this, but even that was deleted from the movie -- probably at least in part due to the fact that the actor playing Tron thought the whole thing was "confusing." Of course, had the series gone further down this path and allowed Tron: Legacy to be a hardcore sex flick set to Daft Punk, maybe they would have sold some more tickets.
Before the entire world realized that George Miller should just make as many Mad Max movies as he can until the day he dies, we were all happy to enjoy his cute family flicks about dancing penguins. Happy Feet tells the story of Mumble, an emperor penguin who tap dances but doesn't battle post-apocalyptic biker gangs. Somehow, it made a lot of money.
"I TAP! I DANCE! I TAP AGAIN!"
The Script:
A side plot of Happy Feet finds Mumble telling others he was abducted by aliens -- later vindicated by the arrival of the "alien" human researchers, who only "abduct" penguins to tag them.
And only "probe their butts" to ... wait, what?
If you go back and look at the script, though, this was just a fake-out to set up a twist in which there are actual goddamn aliens.
Oh no. This is gonna turn into a Mars Needs Moms crossover, isn't it?
The two unseen extraterrestrials decide to move the "bomb sight" away from Earth after spying the dancing penguins -- meaning that the stakes for this cartoon about gyrating arctic birds are so much fucking higher than you thought.
Had the sight landed in literally any part of Australia, they would have killed us extra hard.
Note the fact that they don't turn their death ray off, they simply move its sights to "another part of the universe" -- so don't worry, kids, the fiery cosmic holocaust will be on a planet far, far away from Earth. In a final bizarre twist, it turns out when we see the aliens that they themselves are penguin-like creatures who also like dancing.
Reminder that penguins dance to attract mates, so they're clearly off to fuck.
While this ending surely would have caused even those kids without lice-riddled scalps to scratch their heads, even more bizarre is the script's gratuitous use of the phrase "shit-squirter":
Not even the dulcet tones of Morgan Freeman could make that kind of penguin crassness adorable.
Ghostbusters II Ended With A Random Slavery Discussion
Before the sanctity of the Ghostbusters brand was tarnished by a remake, there was Ghostbusters II -- the movie featuring dancing toasters, an evil spirit whose master plan is to become an adorable baby, and a walking Statue Of Liberty somehow controlled by a goddamn Nintendo controller. But, yup, it's the remake that ruined your childhood, right?
OK, we'll admit the first female Ghostbuster left a lot to be desired.
The Script:
One important question the movie never addresses: What the hell happened to the Statue Of Liberty? Do they just leave it on the street for some poor NYC street sweeper to deal with? Of course not -- in fact, the screenplay includes a final scene where the Ghostbusters attend a ceremony commemorating the statue's return, presumably after they used it to crush all of America's enemies, Godzilla-style.
Stop trying to look up the lady's robe, Bill Murray.
This inspires the Ghostbusters to get all patriotic and sentimental as they think about how their ancestors were welcomed into this great country.
At this point, the ghost of his great-grandpa shows up to kick his ass for nearly destroying the statue.
You can probably see where we're going with this, as the ever-thoughtless Peter Venkman asks Winston about his ancestors. As in, Ernie Hudson's character, the only black Ghostbuster. Winston points out that his forefathers were taken to a different harbor ... one with no giant stone lady or picture-taking.
"Geez, thanks for ruining the moment. Asshole."
Yup, apparently the Ghostbusters couldn't make it through two adventures together without one of them bringing up slavery. Even Peter's comment about how his female ancestors "slept around" with people of all races can't save the situation.
At this point, the ghosts of his grandmas show up to have sex with Ray's great-grandpa.
Perhaps because the filmmakers didn't want to end their beloved franchise by reminding us all of one of the darkest chapters in American history (right before segueing into slutty grandmas), the scene was disposed of in the containment unit of shitty ideas.
The Girl FromThe classic teen romance Say Anything is best remembered for its iconic boombox scene, which solidified John Cusack's movie-star status while ensuring Peter Gabriel a Scrooge McDuck-like vault full of royalty checks.
Because of this scene, it was illegal to sell a boombox without a pack of condoms throughout the '90s.
The Script:
In the movie's opening scenes, Cusack's character watches smittenly from the audience as his romantic interest, Diane, delivers her valedictorian speech.
Why's he the one who looks smug as hell?
Because writer-director Cameron Crowe's mission in life lately has seemingly been to make everyone think Cameron Crowe sucks, he released some deleted script pages on his website. Perhaps to really hammer home just how much the school's administration liked Diane, he wrote a scene where one of the teachers straight-up hits on her. Diane is in a utility room when she's approached by her English teacher, Mr. Deegan -- a character who is also mentioned in other Crowe movies, so perhaps this is based on a real incident in his life.
Dan Castellaneta plays an unnamed teacher in this movie, so we'll imagine
the rest of the dialogue in Homer voice.
Deegan then proceeds to confess his creepy feelings to her, which he thinks is totally cool because she graduated at least several minutes ago.
"You thought men smiled at you for reasons other than sex? Oh, child. We failed you."
He even tries to kiss her, which she evades.
"Mind closing the door on your way out?"
Mr. Deegan eventually leaves, but not before turning and offering this depressingly disturbing line:
"But not too old. Nineteen, tops."
Keep in mind, this is the beginning of the movie -- and the rest is mostly going to be Diane having to deal with a gauntlet of bullshit. So in addition to her dad going to fucking prison, she also has to fend off a pedophilic dickhead teacher? Nothing short of Peter Gabriel himself randomly showing up to kick that guy in the balls would have made that scene work.
The Goonies is a cherished '80s movie about a group of kids who are so cool they go on treasure hunts but so uncool they refuse to call the overweight and Chinese kids by their actual names (either that, or the parents of Data and Chunk were fucking cruel). The gang embarks on a subterranean hunt for the treasure of One-Eyed Willy, a 17th-century pirate and dumb dick joke the screenwriter somehow snuck into a movie for children.
The Script:
In the midst of their treasure hunt, the kids have to swim through a wishing well -- but in doing so become COVERED WITH LEECHES!
Inappropriate enthusiasm in the original.
Data, being the smart one (in case the name didn't tip you off), conceives of a plan to electrocute the leeches, using the water as a conductor to zap them right off. If there are any 10-year-olds reading this, please don't try this at home.
This is how Sloth ended up looking like that.
Amazingly, his plan works, but has a (hopefully) unintended consequence -- the two girls "squeal," "sigh," and feel their "knees buckle." So, yeah, Data totally gives the girls orgasms.
That's a slur for "Asian person" we'd never heard before.
Stef even says, "I'm in love with a pond" -- which is either a one-off joke or a setup for the ickiest sequel imaginable. Andy, on the other hand, "feels violated" by the experience and "slaps Data across the face" after Data "victoriously smiles."
If this movie had an ending like Stand By Me, we'd see that Data now runs a sex-toy empire.
This scene must have survived a lot of drafts, because it's included in the movie's novelization. Meaning producer Steven Spielberg must have OK'd it up to a certain point. So if the director of Jaws and Schindler's List thought it was a good idea to pause the treasure hunt so a small boy could bring two teenage girls in a filthy pond to climax, maybe everyone should stop complaining about the Indiana Jones "nuke the fridge" scene and just be glad that Short Round didn't pop by to pleasure women with a car battery.
J.M. McNab co-hosts the pop culture nostalgia podcast Rewatchability, which can also be found on iTunes. Follow him on Twitter @Rewatchability.
Zoroastrianism used to be one of the biggest religions in the world, but their idea of heaven had a slight twist on it: To get there you'd have to cross a bridge, sometimes rickety, sometimes wide and sturdy. If you fell off, you'd go to the House of Lies for eternity. Fun! Not terrifying at all! This month, Jack, Dan, and Michael, along with comedians Casey Jane Ellison and Ramin Nazer discuss their favorite afterlife scenarios from movies, sci-fi, and lesser-known religions. Get your tickets here, and we'll see you on the other side of the bridge!
For more scenes we're glad never made it into our favorite films, check out 6 Classic Movies That Were Saved By (Wisely) Deleted Scenes and 6 Deleted Scenes That Prove The Book Isn't Always Better.
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