best12bars "offended" by PRODUCERS movie... — Page 2

I believe it was removed because movie audiences might not "get it". Plus it's not even funny. It barely registers a response in at the St. James, since not many people outside the theatre community are familiar with Show Boat to see it's a take on it.

Just to chime in:

BwayBaby18--Actually, there are more straight people in RENT that have AIDS than gay people. And the Angel/Collins relationship is the best relationship within the show/movie . . . so how does it offend you?

Well, I am used to racist/stereotype double standards in film, music, etc. so it doesn't really even affect me anymore. I mean, if the movie WHITE CHICKS was made with a diffent color cast and called BLACK CHICKS it would have been run in the ground by civil rights groups, etc. It's the way it is . . . which isn't a good thing . . . but it is.

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Updated On: 12/20/05 at 01:45 PM

SamIAm --- You actually just proved my point. So, the TWO black jokes were cut. Not one random one. Even more proving there might have been a biased "agenda" here.

Black jokes just aren't funny anymore. But gay jokes are a riot!

I know it's not Mel Brooks. I know what he originally wrote for the stage (we all do).

Somebody (don't know who... and don't care) edited the black jokes out. What's bothering me is "why" this was done.

You're actually helping prove my point, though.

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Updated On: 12/20/05 at 01:55 PM

I said above that I "don't care" who made the edit... but I actually do. I would love to hear why they cut the two black jokes out. I would never in a million years get any answer other than "they were trimmed for time." I'm sure they wouldn't even try to say "they weren't funny," since "funny" is in the eye of the beholder.

spiderdj82 -- You raised a very good point, and I would love to hear BwayBaby18's answer to your question.

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I hope we are all still offended by hypocrisy until the end of time. Didn't know that had gone out of fashion.

Also... didn't know George Bush edited "The Producers," but if you say so...

Happy Hols, to you too.

Didn't mean to "bring the room down." Just me getting bugged by the "hidden biggots" in the world. At least Bush stands at a podium and says what's on his mind (boy, was THAT an oxymoron)...

I still wanna know who "slithered" into the edit bay unobtrusively, with the best of intentions, and cut these "touchy" black jokes. They should be held accountable as to "why." What "values of humor and taste" are they upholding, while not giving a crap about others.

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Updated On: 12/20/05 at 02:56 PM

My problem with this whole thread is reason for cutting. This thread is assuming these 2 jokes were cut because they were offensive. But that is only one opinion. They could have been cut for millions of reasons, just like every other joke, song, scene, or character that was cut in making the musical originally and now making the movie. LSD was cut when making the musical so was Mel Brooks trying not to offend the drug addicts? No, it just didnt work in that media, he wanted less characters, etc etc etc. My point is who knows why things were cut and why they were not cut, why jump the gun and try and guess why each joke was cut, esp when you say yourself that you enjoyed the movie.

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Let's get Gary Beach in drag as Barbara Bush and put in the song "Great White Father of the Year" from "Purlie, Only change it to "Great White Mother of the Year"! Now THAT is FUNNY! Oh no, I'm wrong, It's just TRUE! LOL!
I wasn't dissing your way 12Bars, You know that. I have this style of just "thinking in type" and - well, My mind goes on the CD Shuffle mode and any old thing can pop out, But this Barbara Bush thing has great potential and the only ones offended will be working for Haliburton, LOL!

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best12bars,

You say that no one will ever give you a "proven" reason why the two "black" jokes were edited out of the film. I was there, and this is the "real" reason, honestly.

They were both edited out for time reasons. When the original cut of the movie was too long, anything that COULD be cut was cut. This included both of the jokes that you mention. The were easy cuts, as neither has anything to do with the plot of the movie. You might question the wisdom of cutting these moments rather than some others, but that is the reason. Honestly. No political agenda.

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best12bars, agreed.

I just bid on a brain on ebay, so, start getting a life

PS - it is gonna take a long, long, long, long time!!!

Have fun

best12, I'm not trying to prove ANY point or place the blame anywhere. I'm just saying that King of Broadway and several other things that were NOT black related were also cut. So, I'm not sure there is any agenda here.

We don't know how the test audiences reacted to this before the final edit, so we have no idea whether the cuts were in response to their preferences or Universals. It is what it is. I miss the jokes, but I don't think the movie suffers all that much because of their being cut.

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best12, I'm sorry you were offended by the selective cuts made in the film. Having never seen the play or the movie, I have to say, I believe what leefowler said.

If they weren't important to the plot, I would cut them too. Someone earlier made the comment that they weren't even all that funny, which I believe. Black jokes have been done for sooooooooo long in this country, I don't find most of the recent ones to be all that funny anymore, simply becuase they've all been done 50million times. If the joke was a black person speaking in that broken elglish, then it's even less funny, because to the majority of American movie viewers (regardless of race), that isn't a Showboat reference, that's just another joke based on the old views of African-Americans.

African-American sterotypes are still all over entertainment. I can't even think of a show/movie with Black characters where there isn't a big black scary man, loud ghetto girls, 'thugs' or any of the other ones.

I'm sorry if the potrayal of homosexuals offended you, but I highly doubt that the cuts of the black jokes was due to PC (especially in a Mel Brooks film!).

So offensiveness aside, I think that the removal of the 2 black jokes and many of the jew jokes (Jewish American Princess, all of King of Broadway, "A Rabbi Without a Shul") was what made me like this movie less than the broadway show. The broadway show seemed to constantly do what Mel Brooks keeps calling "ringing the bell"; offending groups left and right. The fact that this movie only seemed to make fun of homosexuality seemed to lessen the movie's humor to me.
Made me feel like it was less of a Mel Brooks piece than the musical.

In general both the critics and many of the audience members who saw the stage version seem to vacillate in their expectations of this movie. First of all the movie was conceived as a comedy/musical (not a movie musical) but it was supposed to be a love letter to the old movie musicals with rich color, broad borscht belt comedic performances and a lot of close-ups (so it is pure Mel Brooks)

What did the critics expect? Secondly, when I walked out of the 3:30 saturday show at the Ziegfeld with lots of happy audience members, I heard one young woman complain that it was too much LIKE the stage version, and she had expected new material. ???
Brooks never said he was rewriting this show.

Finally, you can't have it both ways. There are those who are complaining that the show is TOO much like the stage version and those that want every piece and hair in place to look JUST like the stage version (which is impossible, given the fact that the studio has some say on what goes into the final edited film and the fact that some exceptions must be made for the screen).

The intermission line would make NO sense to a movie audience for example (nor did the 'why Bloom go so far down camera right' line seem to fit as modified from the original, but they did TRY to keep that one in)

All things considered, I thought the movie was a good representation and I applaud Brooks for preserving these performances on screen.

The larger problem for this movie getting off the ground may relate to the transit strike in NYC and the fact that no one can get to the theater to see the film.

Let's hope the other cities make up for it in per screen take so that Universal doesn't get a case of the jitters and decide not to spend a lot of advertising money for the nation wide opening.

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Updated On: 12/21/05 at 09:40 AM