There’s Something About Mary

[WildcatFan1982]

I’m watching this on TBS while I’m waiting for the baseball game to start. And I just watched this scene.



Except they replaced the word ‘retards’ with ‘goofy kids’. Now I get that the word ‘retard’ is offensive but this edit totally ruins the joke. The whole point is that this guy is so dumb that he thinks it’ll impress a girl by saying ‘I work with retards’. I feel like having to pause and explain this to someone is more time consuming and damaging than just leaving the joke in place.

 

[J_Dee]

Spielberg recently addressed film censorship like that, in relation to the changes he made to ET:

That was a mistake. I never should have done that. ‘E.T.’ is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily or being forced to peer through.

E.T.’ was a film in which I was sensitive to the fact that the federal agents were approaching kids with firearms exposed, and I thought I would change the guns into walkie-talkies… Years went by, and I changed my own views.

I should have never messed with the archives of my own work, and I don’t recommend anyone do that. All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like, and what the world was receiving when we got those stories out there. So I really regret having that out there.

I agree 100%.

 

[WildcatFan1982]

My thinking was that it was just like Robert Downey Jr in ‘tropic thunder’. The joke wasn’t aimed at intellectually disabled people, it’s aimed at people that use them for their own self gain. It is in no way mean spirited. Editing it ruins the context of the joke.

 

[LineSkiCat14]

That's probably the word I feel most uncomfortable using or hearing. And I do agree. A perfect example of this is Michael Scott. You're supposed to laugh at how incredibly ignorant he is, not that you agree with him.

.. although his idea for marking the one Asian girl with a sharpie in "A Benihana Christmas" is modern day ingenuity.

 

[It'saDoneDeal]

Damn dog, prayers up, I hope you still got a lot of hee hees and hah hahs tonight.

 

[Col. Angus]

I call one of my dogs retard all the time and he doesn’t mind. If I say it high pitched he even wags his tail.

 

[vhcat70]

About the funniest movie I ever watched. Was falling out of seat in theater in laughter.

 

[august-west]

I worked on Warren’s mothers clock recently. He was in town visiting, nice fella.

 

[Nightwish84]

Great movie and one reason why you shouldn't completely abandon physical media and only stream. Execs and often directors enjoy meddling instead of leaving one's work as is. There's some very bored people in the world who look for things to complain about. As J_Dee pointed out however, it can sometimes affect the actual disc too. And it's not only a woke thing. Lucas has been tinkering with the Star Wars films for decades. Ridley Scott loves creating several diff. cuts of his films, so now one movie might have four diff. cuts and every few years he'll change his mind as to which one is his "preferred cut."

I also don't believe censorship or sensitivity has ruined comedies. The Odd Couple is hilarious and something like that could easily be done today. It's just that people got tired of gross-out humor and weed jokes from people like Seth Rogan and Kevin Smith.

 

[WildcatFan1982]

 

[UKWildcats1987]

That's probably the word I feel most uncomfortable using or hearing. And I do agree. A perfect example of this is Michael Scott. You're supposed to laugh at how incredibly ignorant he is, not that you agree with him.

.. although his idea for marking the one Asian girl with a sharpie in "A Benihana Christmas" is modern day ingenuity.

I agree. The character was so brilliantly written though.