Donald Sutherland's Pants
An adult coming of age movie entitled Garden State made the rounds last summer. A friend of mine told me it was worth watching, so I bought the DVD. If you are a fan of movies filled with generational angst, which I am, this movie fills the bill. But if you are easily offended by casual sex, drug use, spoiled brats, and generally slovenly behavior, stick with Casablanca. Let's face it. A movie in which one of the protagonists is a grave digger who steals the jewelry off dead bodies prior to their being put in the ground is not exactly The Brady Bunch.
Included in the movie soundtrack is a song called In The Waiting Line. It is a "head" song. Translated: play it while getting stoned. The lyrics ask the musical question: "Do you believe in what you see?" And that, my friends, is the topic of this week's essay.
Animal House is the quintessential college frat house slob movie. It was fairly raunchy when it was released in 1978. By today's standards, it is still...fairly raunchy, at least as to the original. I remember when it was still playing in the theaters, I took my mother-in-law to see it while we waited for my wife to do some shopping at the mall. Not a good thing to do.
As cable television's voracious appetite for 24 hour programming has expanded, the networks have reached deeper and deeper into the vaults looking for movies to show. Unfortunately, today's PG-13 rated movies were yesterday's X rated movies, and the networks are now forced to simonize, galvanize, and sanitize these cinematic forays into raunch in order to show them on television. Animal House has been subjected to this treatment several times, and once again has been purified in the baptism of the network censor.
AMC, the American Movie Classic Channel, has shown Animal House for a number of years. Having watched the original on DVD numerous times, I know what parts of been cut, and what words have been dubbed with more acceptable vernacular. But AMC moved the process to new heights this year.
At one point in the movie, Boone, one of the frat boys, visits his girlfriend. He catches her "in corpus delecti" with her English professor, played by Donald Sutherland. How do we know this? Donald Sutherland comes out of the bedroom dressed in nothing but a long sweater. He swaggers into the kitchen and reaches for a coffee cup on the top shelf, at which point we are blessed with a view of Sutherland's full moon rising. In other words, we see his butt. Anyone who has watched the original version of the movie more than once KNOWS this is where we see Donald Sutherland's butt.
My wife and I were dumbfounded when in last week's AMC "modified for television" version of the movie, Donald Sutherland came out of the bedroom not only wearing the usual long sweater, but wearing a pair of pants. Where did Donald Sutherland get those pants? And when he reached for the coffee cup, instead of seeing Donald Sutherland's butt, we saw Donald Sutherland's pants. Maybe he went back into the bedroom and got them. Maybe LL Bean made a delivery. Maybe he and the girlfriend were just having cookies and the pants were always there. After almost 30 years of seeing Donald Sutherland's butt, it is nice to know that he was finally able to get some clothes. It was a Festivus Miracle. (Ask a Seinfeld fan!)
Obviously AMC digitally added the tastefully designed slacks. A friend of mine asked the more probing question, if the pants were digitally added, what would be left if the pants were digitally removed?
Included in the movie soundtrack is a song called In The Waiting Line. It is a "head" song. Translated: play it while getting stoned. The lyrics ask the musical question: "Do you believe in what you see?" And that, my friends, is the topic of this week's essay.
Animal House is the quintessential college frat house slob movie. It was fairly raunchy when it was released in 1978. By today's standards, it is still...fairly raunchy, at least as to the original. I remember when it was still playing in the theaters, I took my mother-in-law to see it while we waited for my wife to do some shopping at the mall. Not a good thing to do.
As cable television's voracious appetite for 24 hour programming has expanded, the networks have reached deeper and deeper into the vaults looking for movies to show. Unfortunately, today's PG-13 rated movies were yesterday's X rated movies, and the networks are now forced to simonize, galvanize, and sanitize these cinematic forays into raunch in order to show them on television. Animal House has been subjected to this treatment several times, and once again has been purified in the baptism of the network censor.
AMC, the American Movie Classic Channel, has shown Animal House for a number of years. Having watched the original on DVD numerous times, I know what parts of been cut, and what words have been dubbed with more acceptable vernacular. But AMC moved the process to new heights this year.
At one point in the movie, Boone, one of the frat boys, visits his girlfriend. He catches her "in corpus delecti" with her English professor, played by Donald Sutherland. How do we know this? Donald Sutherland comes out of the bedroom dressed in nothing but a long sweater. He swaggers into the kitchen and reaches for a coffee cup on the top shelf, at which point we are blessed with a view of Sutherland's full moon rising. In other words, we see his butt. Anyone who has watched the original version of the movie more than once KNOWS this is where we see Donald Sutherland's butt.
My wife and I were dumbfounded when in last week's AMC "modified for television" version of the movie, Donald Sutherland came out of the bedroom not only wearing the usual long sweater, but wearing a pair of pants. Where did Donald Sutherland get those pants? And when he reached for the coffee cup, instead of seeing Donald Sutherland's butt, we saw Donald Sutherland's pants. Maybe he went back into the bedroom and got them. Maybe LL Bean made a delivery. Maybe he and the girlfriend were just having cookies and the pants were always there. After almost 30 years of seeing Donald Sutherland's butt, it is nice to know that he was finally able to get some clothes. It was a Festivus Miracle. (Ask a Seinfeld fan!)
Obviously AMC digitally added the tastefully designed slacks. A friend of mine asked the more probing question, if the pants were digitally added, what would be left if the pants were digitally removed?
Do you believe in what you see? I don't think so. And in trying to visualize the answer to my friend's question, I am not sure I want to see much of anything, especially that, whether I believe it or not.
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