Memorable edited for TV versions

[installLSC]

We all remember the days when TV broadcasts of theatrical movies were edited for content or just to fit time slots. In some cases scenes were added. Any edits you remember that were noticeable?
I'll start with an edit that may have actually improved the film. Steve Martin's "The Jerk" movie, when aired on TV, had a scene where a businessmen begged for money to fix his private jet. IIRC, it replaced a scene where Martin beats up some mobsters (the scene had racial epithets that made it problematic for TV). Funny thing is I like it better than the scene it replaced.

 

[IM42A]

The TV version of the movie Deliverance comes immediately to mind. "That scene" is edited in such a fashion that it is not at all clear what has happened, except that Ned Beatty is forced to run around the woods in his underpants and squeal like a pig. Ronny Cox's character Drew says "they were... assaulting two members of our party at gunpoint" has the word "sexually" edited out.

And in Pulp Fiction, the character of The Gimp is entirely edited out, and much of the rough (to say the least) language is deleted throughout the entire film. Strangely enough, though, the story hangs together quite well without the profanity.

 

[Cool_guy81]

AMC aired Fast Times at Ridgemont High and when Phobe Cates was suppose to take her bra off they showed that she kept her bra on then kissed Judge Reinhold's character. When they showed Jennifer Jason Leigh about to the deed they just cut scenes where they showed anything and it was hard to watch as they just cut what they were saying to.

The funny thing is when they aired Sex in the City in syndication I remember watching it on Fox 17 and when they showed nudity they just blurred the private parts instead of cutting out all the scenes.

 

[Deleted User]

Blazing Saddles was edited down to the point it ran 22 seconds.

 

[anotherguyTN]

I was thinking about bringing up Blazing Saddles because of the different ways the N-word is edited depending on the channel it was on. Sometimes they would just blank out the entire word, other times thereBut at least the last time it was on TCM they showed it unedited with an explanation at the beginning that it was meant to show the ignorance of the people in the town.

 

[Mikey Radio]

Blazing Saddles was edited down to the point it ran 22 seconds.

Kind of reminds me of the time Mad TV did a parody sketch, imagining a full episode of The Sopranos, edited to be aired on Pax TV (religious cable channel). They took a full episode and cut out all the profanity, sex and violence and ended up with an episode that was about 2 1/2 minutes in the end, Lol.

I seem to recall a few crappier movies from the early 1980s that didn't get great reviews, nor did they make complete sense to moviegoers, so they added or changed parts once they started airing on TV to help fill out the storylines a bit. I think it may have been the last Smokey and the Bandit (the one without Bert Reynolds - where Jackie Gleason was originally going to play both the Smokey AND the Bandit parts and they kind of made the script up as they went along, before trashing that idea completely and going in another direction) and the last Airplane movie (with a completely different group at the helm than the ones who created and directed the first one, which became somewhat of a cult hit/classic).

Then there's the somewhat infamous scene from Animal House. When the professor played by Donald Southerland walks through the kitchen facing away from the camera in the movie, he's wearing only a sweater and no pants. When that movie began airing on TCM or some such, they used CGI to add a pair of pants on the guy.

 

[IM42A]

I was thinking about bringing up Blazing Saddles because of the different ways the N-word is edited depending on the channel it was on. Sometimes they would just blank out the entire word, other times thereBut at least the last time it was on TCM they showed it unedited with an explanation at the beginning that it was meant to show the ignorance of the people in the town.

Yes, Blazing Saddles presented a problem with the use of that word. In the TV version of Pulp Fiction, where it fell like hailstones, it was as though it was surgically removed. The scene of John Travolta shot dead in the shower was also sanitized (I think they just showed his face), and the bedroom scene with Butch and Fabienne was edited as well. Aside from The Gimp, you really don't miss much of anything by watching the TV version --- the story is exactly the same.

 

[Mikey Radio]

Yes, Blazing Saddles presented a problem with the use of that word.

They also cut out some of the Yiddish slang, though few people would probably understand it. Madeline Kahn's character was called Lili von Sch(xx)pp, and her last name in Yiddish means to have sex with someone. Gene Wilder's says her name, the sheriff asks him "Lili von who??" and Wilder repeats just her last name in perfect clarity. Both times her last name is said, the audio usually cuts out for a brief second to censor it out, though again, few people would get the inference.

 

[anotherguyTN]

They also cut out some of the Yiddish slang, though few people would probably understand it. Madeline Kahn's character was called Lili von Sch(xx)pp, and her last name in Yiddish means to have sex with someone. Gene Wilder's says her name, the sheriff asks him "Lili von who??" and Wilder repeats just her last name in perfect clarity. Both times her last name is said, the audio usually cuts out for a brief second to censor it out, though again, few people would get the inference.

I had seen that edit before but I didn't know why until now.

I saw in my last post that I accidentally deleted part of my comment on editing the N-word. I had meant to add that sometimes the first syllable was left in depending on the channel.

 

[installLSC]

Then there's the somewhat infamous scene from Animal House. When the professor played by Donald Southerland walks through the kitchen facing away from the camera in the movie, he's wearing only a sweater and no pants. When that movie began airing on TCM or some such, they used CGI to add a pair of pants on the guy.

At least that's better than the VH-1 edit of "Showgirls". Not only do they edit the film severely making the movie hard to follow, they edit bras onto women in the movies' many topless scenes! Why on earth you even bother with a basic cable edit of a NC-17 movie I don't understand.

 

[CaliRadioFan]

AMC still shows Blazing Saddles on occasion and it's a 2 hour version. The N word is not heard and it contains a deleted sequence between Bart and Mongo.

 

[ThePowerCow]

"Smokey and the Bandit". Jackie Gleason's cuss words replaced by the voice of Fred Flintstone.

 

[Aquarius]

A few years ago I watched Scarface on ION, back when they used to air movies. As you can imagine all of the swearing was removed and replaced with filler words. The chainsaw scene and other violent scenes were completely removed also. I think most of the scenes where people were getting shot were also removed. So you would see Tony shoot his gun and never actually hit anything lol. Perhaps the most memorable scene was the final scene, Tony Montana didn’t do his infamous cocaine bit, and you never see him get shot at the end. You just see the barrel of a gun fire and Tony just falls into the pool, with no blood and the movie ends.

Robocop on ION also had a similar fate, the scene where the robot kills the cop at the beginning is deleted, and so is the scene of Robocop losing his legs. Of course all F words are replaced with filler.

A few years ago I watched the movie Colors on my local CW affiliate and during one scene the Cisco hold music is used in the background. I guess maybe the network it aired on didn’t have the rights to whatever music was playing in that scene, but just throwing in random Cisco hold music was hilarious.

BET was notorious for editing their movies, back in the day. I remember a scene from the Kid N Play movie House Party, where Kid is in jail. In the unedited version while Kid is in the cell, he tells someone to suck his well you know what and on the BET version he says suck my quick.

Recently I watched Blue Bloods on Hulu, there’s an episode where Detective Danny and his partner are in Chinatown. A few weeks later I caught the same episode on NewsNation, and it looked like some dialogue and scenes were missing. Most of those being Detective Danny cracking jokes about Chinatown and the suspect being Chinese. I guess the network found them offensive or in bad taste.

 

[KeithE4]

"Smokey and the Bandit". Jackie Gleason's cuss words replaced by the voice of Fred Flintstone.

Specifically, Henry Corden (Fred #2). The overdubbing of the naughty language for TV occurred sometime in the early 1980s. Corden did his best, but it was obvious that he wasn't Gleason.

Gleason was probably to ill to do it by that time (He'd had triple-bypass surgery in 1978; Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, and Jerry Reed did their own overdubbing). He died in 1987.

 

[gr8oldies]

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation......people have foggy memories of an extra scene from some early TV airings of the holiday classics that wasn't in the theatrical movie or VHS release. The scene (as written) shows Clark, with family in tow, having returned to the entrance of the tree lot to see if they could borrow a saw, and the owner, dressed in a Santa suit and lying on a lawn chair, saying in no uncertain terms, no. A still from the scene appeared on an early DVD release, and if the scene still exists, it, or any other deleted scene, has not appeared on any DVD or Blu-Ray release of the film.

If you've got 15 minutes, this video tells us about other scenes that were in the original script, and probably shot, but not included in the final version, though sometimes alluded to.