Movie Scenes, As Seen on TV

June 19, 2009 3:37 PM

Have any movies ever filmed scenes during regular production that were meant specifically for the purpose of being used in a TV airing?

Pretty simple question, I think. I couldn't find an answer on Google. I'm thinking of pivotal scenes in films that just could not be shown on television with any reasonable amount of editing, so the director shot a "self-censored" version of the scene meant to be included in TV airings of the film. What about additional dialogue or ADR specifically made for TV airings? I highly doubt either of these exist, but I'm just curious if the hivemind knows something I don't. Thanks!

posted by joshrholloway to media & arts (31 comments total)

I have heard of scenes being filmed with alternate dialogue for the airplane/broadcast version, but I am failing to locate any cites. Entirely different action staged? I don't know that any producer would want to foot the bill to set up different scenes this way.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:42 PM on June 19

Sorta what you're looking for maybe? -- There's a scene in Gremlins 2 where, in the movie version, the Gremlins chew up the projector and the film "breaks". In the video version, it's like they chewed up a tape and the VCR "breaks".
posted by inigo2 at 3:45 PM on June 19

I do know that they did "TV-safe" retakes of scenes for Sex And The City with the intent that it would one day be syndicated. I think I heard that on Fresh Aire when they were interviewing the creator or someone else attached to the series.
posted by hippybear at 3:48 PM on June 19

Yes, biscuit, alternate dialogue fits my criteria.
posted by joshrholloway at 3:48 PM on June 19

For an excellent and hilarious tour of TV-safe alternate dialogue, check out the extras on Hot Fuzz.
posted by Billegible at 4:00 PM on June 19

Ghostbusters shot scenes with toned down dialogue for TV too. There are several on youtube.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 4:01 PM on June 19

They did the same thing with the Sopranos. However, I cannot think of any specific examples of movies doing this.
posted by bove at 4:02 PM on June 19

I almost certain that the TV edit of Mallrats has extra or re-shot scenes but I can't quite find the evidence.
posted by mhum at 4:06 PM on June 19

Oh, and I can recall another anecdote involving an entire scene. In Blazing Saddles, I *KNEW* I remembered seeing a scene where Mongo goes down a well in a deep-sea diving helmet, but it's nowhere to be found on the DVD or VHS version. Turns out this and a few other scenes were only ever used for the TV version.

The TV release has several extra scenes that weren't in the theatrical release. - When Sheriff Bart is trying to capture Mongo, after he delivers the "CandyGram for Mongo", it then shows a "draw on the dummy sheriff" game that fires a cannon at Mongo. - A scene where Bart convinces Mongo to go diving down a well for Spanish Doubloons and Bart stops pumping air to the diving suit because it's time for his lunch break. - Escaping from the "bad guy queue", Jim and Bart encounter a Baptism ceremony. - Governor Le Petomane rides into the fake Rock Ridge in a stagecoach and tries to talk to the fake people.

The "Alternate Versions" links in IMDB listings can give you a lot of detail about that kind of thing.
posted by Billegible at 4:07 PM on June 19

Trading Places has alternate TV/movie versions - see here.
posted by Addlepated at 4:08 PM on June 19

One of the extras on the Shaun of the Dead DVD is an alternate version of an incredibly sweary Peter Serafinowicz scene. It's called Funky Pete.
posted by permafrost at 4:11 PM on June 19

I almost certain that the TV edit of Mallrats has extra or re-shot scenes but I can't quite find the evidence.

The Mallrats commentary is my favorite fall-asleep-to entertainment, and I just put it in the other night—Smith and co. mention the TV edit, but only in reference to scenes that were zoomed and re-framed to exclude bewbies and/or Coke products.
posted by carsonb at 4:16 PM on June 19

This isn't exactly what you were asking about, but I worked for a company that did a "gay version" and a "straight version" of many of the TV movies they made. In one version, the male leads are best friends. In the other, they're best friends and they fuck at some point. The goal is to make it go from straight to gay with smallest possible hit to the budget, so it's ideal if they can do that just by dropping in one extra scene

There was also the christmas movie in which the family had two fathers in one version, and a father and mother in the another. For every family scene, they would shoot it once, swap a spouse, and shoot it again. The different versions had different titles and different broadcasters.
posted by gonna get a dog at 4:16 PM on June 19 [4 favorites]

Halloween did. Halloween 2 was filming and they needed additional scenes to fill out the movies 2 hour time on TV because after edits for TV it was too short. So additional scenes of the principles were filmed only for that. A DVD was later released with that footage and all the violence
posted by arniec at 4:41 PM on June 19

Oh, and I can recall another anecdote involving an entire scene. In Blazing Saddles, I *KNEW* I remembered seeing a scene where Mongo goes down a well in a deep-sea diving helmet, but it's nowhere to be found on the DVD or VHS version. Turns out this and a few other scenes were only ever used for the TV version.

These are just deleted scenes put back into teevee airings to round out the air time. The scene wasn't filmed for television, it was filmed for the movie and then cut. Another example of this is Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which airs sometimes with more of the abortion scene footage, which I promise you wasn't filmed for television.
posted by Bookhouse at 4:42 PM on June 19

This might tangentially fit: The TV broadcast of Aliens contained the sentry-gun scene that exists in the director's cut of the film. While Aliens is quite a long movie, as I recall (I was quite young) so much of the movie had to be edited or cut. I'm pretty sure Hudson's entire death scene was cut (too much swearing to salvage) as well as many other cuts. Of course, seeing the edited down, but added in sentry-guns on TV, then buying the vhs tape was kind of a shock.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:57 PM on June 19

As Bookhouse notes, Fast Times at Ridgemont High has a lot of 'em.
posted by box at 5:17 PM on June 19

Unfortunately I don't have all the details, but the video (and, I presume, the theater) version of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was slightly different from the TV one. It wasn't just that scenes were cut, but the TV version had scenes that weren't in the video.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:32 PM on June 19

There's a scene in Gremlins 2 where, in the movie version, the Gremlins chew up the projector and the film "breaks". In the video version, it's like they chewed up a tape and the VCR "breaks".

Someone in the fan community (there's a Gremlins 2 fan community?) made their own DVR version that is quite impressive.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:10 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

In Ace Ventura: Pet Detective they cut out several scenes for the TV version. To make the time come out right, they stuck in deleted scenes. The one I remember is a scene where Ace is in a sports bar getting directions to Ray Finkle's house.
posted by cmoj at 8:42 PM on June 19

That scene from Aliens was in the non-US release of the film, along with another 20-odd minutes of footage (showing the colony populated and the discovery of the eggs by one of the colonists, and other things I can't remember off the top of my head.)
posted by hippybear at 8:58 PM on June 19

This is a very common practice in film and television production. A production company I work for shot two different versions of a show simultaneously, one for American audiences and one for Canadian audiences. In the first take, use an American geographical reference. In the second take, use a Canadian geographical reference.
posted by Bobby Bittman at 9:38 PM on June 19

I'm surprised no one's yet mentioned the FX airing of Snakes on a Plane, which this question seems tailor-made for.

I can't find anything more on it, but it looks like Sam actually did an alternate take for this signature line, instead of merely dubbing it over. I have no idea if the swearing in the rest of the film was merely re-dubbed, or censored out altogether. I know some movies do have the actors do voice-overs of clean versions of R-rated dialogue, often with comical results.

I'm curious how Bruce's "Yippee-ki-yay [mama jama]" line from Die Hard is handled on its TV airings. Ditto everything in Goodfellas, which... actually just aired on TCM.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 3:04 AM on June 20

I don't know of any completely different scenes that have been shot as TV coverage, but this sort of thing comes into consideration on literally every single R-rated movie (and many PG-13-rated movies) produced in the US. All the major studios require a "TV/Airline" version of every film as part of the standard delivery process.

Usually before shooting the studio will go through the script and flag any dialogue/scenes that might need additional coverage. A best effort is made to cover the scenes during production -- reframing a shot so that there's less nudity involved, doing a few takes of clean dialogue, etc. -- but this is generally not a big priority and ends up getting fixed in post. Foul language is covered during ADR (additional dialogue recording) sessions. These are not necessarily "special" sessions just for TV/Airline, but included as part of the normal sessions that most lead actors will do on a given film.

Another problem arises because every TV network has its own standards and practices, so a version that might fly on A&E might still need to be edited to play on USA, for example. So every time a film airs on a new channel, there's a good chance slight tweaks have to be made.

These include:

- trimming for the time the network has allotted
- formatting for the number of commercial breaks
- getting rid of the end credits (almost always)
- conforming "offensive" dialogue & action to whichever arbitrary network standards and practices

A lot of times they really butcher movies in order to get them to fit into standard TV windows. An extreme example, without getting too in-depth: A cable network once requested that we cut our 150 minute Oscar-nominated film down into a 120 minute window WITH commercials. So that's basically cutting a 150 minute film down to 85 minutes, chopping out almost half the movie!*

Studios are willing to do this sort of thing because TV and Airline sales pull in HUGE amounts of money.

This is why you should NEVER watch a movie you care anything about on network or basic cable TV, or on an airplane.

*A big reason why most movies are between 90 and 100 minutes long is that this fits within the standard 2-hour TV window with commercials.
posted by hamsterdam at 3:33 AM on June 20

Watching Kill Bill on TV a few weeks ago, I noted that she was driving the Party Wagon...
posted by jozxyqk at 4:51 AM on June 20

Speaking of airline versions - in addition to the usual objectionable content, they have to cut out any suggestion that the plane you're in is capable of crashing or exploding. The big ending in Speed was reshot for this reason - quoth Wikipedia: "The bus crashes into a fully fueled cargo plane and is destroyed in a spectacular explosion, with the exception of the edited version (shown on airplanes), where the bus is destroyed by crashing into a loaded refueling truck instead."
posted by Gortuk at 5:19 AM on June 20

I'm curious how Bruce's "Yippee-ki-yay [mama jama]" line from Die Hard is handled on its TV airings.

Yippee-ki-yay, Kemosabe.
posted by the latin mouse at 2:26 PM on June 20

Speaking of airline versions - in addition to the usual objectionable content, they have to cut out any suggestion that the plane you're in is capable of crashing or exploding.

Aren't there a lot of disaster/action movies that fit that bill? It reminds me of the scene in "Airplane" where the passengers are casually watching an airplane disaster movie. I forget if it was actually "Airport," but would something like that have just been not considered for airlines in the first place?

And do other modes of transportation like boats and spacecraft count?
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 4:29 PM on June 20

they have to cut out any suggestion that the plane you're in is capable of crashing

Not always. Virgin Atlantic once served me up an in-flight movie with footage of the planes hitting the towers. (I think it might have been Bowling For Columbine.)
posted by the latin mouse at 1:22 AM on June 21

Yippee-ki-yay, Kemosabe.

The last time I saw it on TV, it was "Yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon."
posted by felix grundy at 7:19 AM on June 21

"I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!"
posted by killy willy at 4:04 PM on June 21