“The finished movie we see on the screen is often far different from the director’s original conception. The Cutting Room Floor is the intriguing study of the wounds, bruises, Band-Aids, and sometimes miracle remedies that can often improve a film… or destroy it.”
— Back page blurb for The Cutting Room Floor
“Trust me!”
— Rudy Russo, Used Cars
Determining cause and effect when it comes to teenage reading is a tricky thing. Did Laurent Bouzereau’s The Cutting Room Floor (Citadel Press, 1994) inspire my interest in deleted and alternate scenes in film and television? Or was I obsessed with them before picking up the book, which is why I grabbed it from the shelf in the first place?
I think there is a healthy dose of the former in this case, which makes it a very special book for me. Regardless, it’s a wonderful piece of work, and one which I find myself returning to again and again every few years. These days, with a combination of DVD extras and the right websites, much of this information is easier to access than it used to be. But back in 1994, especially for poor sods like me who hadn’t got a hope of getting a LaserDisc player, books like this were how you found out about this stuff.
There are so many tales of cut material which I first read about in that book, and stuck in my head immediately. The different edits of Basic Instinct for one; the attempted rescue of Exorcist II: The Heretic for another. But for sheer childish fun, you can’t beat the following tale about Used Cars, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s satirical black comedy.1
Bob Gale: “The only thing that got cut out of Used Cars never got to preview. It was something that the studio insisted that we change in the scene when the car salesmen do a commercial at a football game wearing Groucho Marx glasses. The propman on the film had found these glasses that instead of having a fake nose had a penis for it. We thought that was one of the funniest things we’d ever seen, and we thought to ourselves, you know, these car salesmen, that’s exactly the kind of things they would do. So we shot the scene with these glasses. When we sent the dailies to Columbia Pictures, I got this call from the head of production just ripping me apart for putting these pornographic images in the movie. How could we possibly do this? Had we lost our minds? This has gone beyond the grounds of taste. I got my head handed to me on a platter about this.
Columbia was outraged about this scene. I kept telling them to wait until they saw the scene cut together. I got on an airplane [the movie was shot in Phoenix] and screened the scene for Columbia. Frank Price [the head of the studio at the time], who by the way I have absolute admiration and respect for, turned around and said, ‘It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. You have to redo this.’ And so we reshot the scene with normal Groucho glasses. However, if you have access to the videotape or the laserdisc and you single-frame through the sequence, you’ll see there is still one shot in that sequence where one of the guys is wearing a set of dick-nose glasses. In fact, an actual image of that was in one of the TV spots. It was one of the laughs that we had on the TV censors! It was only a few frames, but it was on national television.”
This tale stuck in my head, long before I ever watched Used Cars. And when did I finally get round to watching Used Cars? Erm, last month. Hey, it only took nearly two decades. There are other films listed in that book that I still haven’t got round to yet.
So does what happens on-screen actually match the anecdote? Let’s quote the relevant part again:
“However, if you have access to the videotape or the laserdisc and you single-frame through the sequence, you’ll see there is still one shot in that sequence where one of the guys is wearing a set of dick-nose glasses.”
And sure enough, you can see Cheryl Rixon and Gerrit Graham wearing the replacement glasses here. It’s probably more accurate to call them spring glasses, rather than Groucho:
And yet in all the reverse shots with Kurt Russell, you can see the dick-nose glasses:
This is explained on the DVD/Blu-ray commentary:
ZEMECKIS: But if you look close I didn’t reshoot Kurt’s side, so when Kurt uses it, the ones he has in his hands coming up, those are the original ones… so I only reshot those two [Rixon and Gerrit] there.
GALE: The studio never caught on.
So that’s the answer, right? That far from it just being one shot they snuck into the film, the dick-nose glasses are actually in every single reverse shot, and it’s not quite as snuck-in as The Cutting Room Floor claims?
Not quite. Certainly, those dick-nose glasses really are in every single reverse shot of Kurt and gang:
But remember: the original anecdote in The Cutting Room Floor was of someone wearing the dick-nose glasses. Can we find a shot of that?
In fact, we can. There is one single extremely short shot of Kurt Russell wearing the glasses:
And there’s your answer. Well, nearly.
I want to highlight something else odd. I think there is something which is rather more subversive than merely reusing the above shot. Take a look at this shot of Rixon and Gerrit wearing the replacement spring glasses:
All is well. But what exactly is going on in the following, similar shot?
That looks uncannily like Gerrit is wearing the dick-nose glasses, not the spring glasses with the smaller nose. In fact, I believe Rixon is wearing them too; it’s more obvious earlier on in the shot. Which means that this shot is from the original version of the scene – the only shot of Rixon and Gerrit while they’re using the dick-nose glasses to make it into the final film.2
Which I find delightful. Zemeckis including a load of shots from the previous shoot in the reverse shots is one thing; that feels like simply a practical consideration to make the reshoot as cheap, quick and easy as possible. But the inclusion of this shot feels like it might be intended as a genuinely subversive move after all.
Just as subversive as The Cutting Room Floor suggested, in fact. Unlike so many anecdotes I’ve investigated over the years, we really could trust this one after all.3 In fact, the film is rather more subversive in this area than they realise on the DVD commentary!
* * *
I try not to talk too much on here about changing standards and attitudes in film and television. It’s not that the topic isn’t worth discussing; it’s just that there’s often not a great deal I can add to that discussion, especially when it’s happening everywhere else. I’d rather focus on other things.
Still, sometimes the gulf in understanding just becomes a little too wide. Let’s just remind ourselves of what Bob Gale said about the dick-nose glasses scene:
“Columbia was outraged about this scene. I kept telling them to wait until they saw the scene cut together. I got on an airplane [the movie was shot in Phoenix] and screened the scene for Columbia. Frank Price [the head of the studio at the time], who by the way I have absolute admiration and respect for, turned around and said, ‘It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. You have to redo this.'”
In the context of much of the rest of the film, it already seems weird that Columbia execs were that distressed about a pair of dick-nose glasses. But in the context of a scene where a woman gets her dress ripped off against her will and her breasts exposed live on television, it starts becoming rather more ridiculous. And let’s not forget the very end of the scene, where she is forcibly groped while screaming.
You can think what you like about that material; I personally laughed at the dress being ripped off within the escalating chaos of the scene, but the groping pushes things too far for me.4 But all that being considered fine, but a pair of dick-nose glasses being apparently disgusting and beyond the pale, pushes even my tolerance of 1980 too far. Exactly how frightened of penises were those Columbia execs? Did they dare take down their trousers at the end of the day? Were their psychologists asleep at the wheel?
But enough sniping at demented studio execs. It sure would have been nice if we could see the whole dick-nose glasses scene as it was shot originally. They even bring up the idea of doing this in the commentary, and ponder including it as an extra. Sadly, when you get round to investigating the extras, they never did end up putting it together. What we get instead is a “gag reel”, in absolutely dreadful picture quality, which has the air of something put together for the wrap party.
But we’re not completely out of luck. We do get a few blurry shots from the original version of the scene:
And it’s this which allows Cheryl Rixon to have the last laugh. Because we also get the following glorious thing: a shot of her modelling with the dick-nose glasses, clearly intended to be used as a cutaway:
Which is really, really, really funny. One of the funniest things from an already very funny scene. And even the chance of it being included in the film was ruined by movie execs who were embarrassed by fake penises, but not by sexual assault.
Still, at least we got to see it. Grimy, dark, and incomplete. But I’ll just about consider it a victory.
Special thanks to Tanya Jones, for staring at this film with me until our eyes bled, and coming up with some key observations. Also thanks to Jonathan Dent and MrBabbage.
Although with character names like “Roy L. Fuchs”, it’s as much Carry On as anything else. ↩
For those of you thinking that Gerrit is holding the spring glasses in his hand in this shot: I thought that for ages too, and it was completely confusing me. In fact, what he’s holding is his keyring, as seen at the start of the scene, and at other points in the film. What looks like the flesh-coloured nose is, I think, a lucky rabbit’s foot or similar. ↩
The details-orientated among you will be wondering: so, did any of these shots really make it into the TV spots, like Bob Gale suggested? The answer is: I don’t know. None of the TV spots are on the Blu-ray; just a single cinema trailer. There is a single TV spot available online… but it’s a Canadian one, rather than US.
I suspect proving this one will be impossible. But there are so many shots of the dick-nose glasses in the film – far more than Bob Gale indicated in his interview in The Cutting Room Floor – that I see no reason to disbelieve him. ↩
It also would have been really easy to cut in the edit, and I wish they’d thought to do it even in 1980. Sometimes, the desire for one extra laugh does you no favours. To be fair, I would also argue that it’s the only true questionable moment in the film. ↩