Last night after hanging out with family and watching fireworks from the riverbank, I headed out to The Pearl to grab a couple of drinks and catch up with a few friends. It was a decent crowd, but not so packed that you couldn't carry on a conversation if you wanted to. A bunch of the regulars were there, as were a number of people I'd run into the night before at Eclipse.
The nice thing about the Pearl on nights like this is that that there are lots of different things you can distract yourself with. You can shoot pool, dance on the floor, hang out on the deck, or just chill out by the bar and watch whatever movie they've thrown in the DVD player.
Wednesday nights usually brings in a bit of an older crowd, so the bartenders normally toss in some sort of 80's cult film, including Wednesday night's choice -- Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
But once you've seen that it's absolutely imperative that you try to find the unintentionally hilarious television broadcast version in which some really over-eager censor found himself face to face with a film overflowing with drug use, frontal nudity, four-letter words, awkward teen sex, and a scene at an abortion clinic -- and basically took it upon himself to create an entirely different movie featuring some of the worst profanity overdubs I have ever heard in my life.
This is because after cutting all the offensive scenes and language from the original version, the film they ended up with was actually too short to broadcast with the normal amount of commercial breaks a TV station schedules during a movie -- so they had to find a way to stretch the thing out enough to placate their advertisers (the broadcast version of Airplane! is another victim of this same style of editing/re-cutting).
Anyways, I'm sitting at the bar splitting my time between talking to a couple of people and watching the screen when the pivotal scene in the film starts to play -- known to most guys my age as "The most important 92 seconds of 1982" (nsfw).
You know how it goes. Everything starts happening in slow motion, Moving in Stereo by the Cars starts playing, and then Phoebe Cates in all her dripping wet glory gets out of the pool wearing a tiny red bikini -- begins walking intently towards a completely entranced Judge Reinhold who can only watch in dream-ecstasy as she tells him how she always thought he was cute, seductively removes her top, and then kisses him full on the lips.
It's a scene that in reality only lasts for like a minute, but with the slow-motion action it seems to go on for ages (not that I'm complaining -- seeing as it's the crowning erotic memory of my pre-pubescent after-hours HBO viewership) -- but here, some 20 years later sitting in a crowded bar where there's so much other noise going on (not to mention the fact that I've watched and ..enjoyed this part hundreds of times since then) I catch myself taking a moment between Phoebe climbing out of the pool and the bathing suit coming off to take a sip of my beer and glance around the bar,
The nice thing about the Pearl on nights like this is that that there are lots of different things you can distract yourself with. You can shoot pool, dance on the floor, hang out on the deck, or just chill out by the bar and watch whatever movie they've thrown in the DVD player. Wednesday nights usually brings in a bit of an older crowd, so the bartenders normally toss in some sort of 80's cult film, including Wednesday night's choice -- Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Now if you've never seen this film -- it's important to note that you really do need to see both versions. You should start with the original film -- complete with nudity, profanity, and the scene where Vincent Schiavelli pulls the heart out of the cadaver's chest.Man, how I adore this stupid movie.
But once you've seen that it's absolutely imperative that you try to find the unintentionally hilarious television broadcast version in which some really over-eager censor found himself face to face with a film overflowing with drug use, frontal nudity, four-letter words, awkward teen sex, and a scene at an abortion clinic -- and basically took it upon himself to create an entirely different movie featuring some of the worst profanity overdubs I have ever heard in my life.
You'll know you're watching the TV version because there are a handful of scenes that were never meant to be included in the final version of film at all (including the sequence where Spicoli tells Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards, and a very young Nicholas Cage how he once hung out with Mick Jagger).(wait until about 1:09 to see what I mean)
This is because after cutting all the offensive scenes and language from the original version, the film they ended up with was actually too short to broadcast with the normal amount of commercial breaks a TV station schedules during a movie -- so they had to find a way to stretch the thing out enough to placate their advertisers (the broadcast version of Airplane! is another victim of this same style of editing/re-cutting).
Anyways, I'm sitting at the bar splitting my time between talking to a couple of people and watching the screen when the pivotal scene in the film starts to play -- known to most guys my age as "The most important 92 seconds of 1982" (nsfw).You know how it goes. Everything starts happening in slow motion, Moving in Stereo by the Cars starts playing, and then Phoebe Cates in all her dripping wet glory gets out of the pool wearing a tiny red bikini -- begins walking intently towards a completely entranced Judge Reinhold who can only watch in dream-ecstasy as she tells him how she always thought he was cute, seductively removes her top, and then kisses him full on the lips.
It's a scene that in reality only lasts for like a minute, but with the slow-motion action it seems to go on for ages (not that I'm complaining -- seeing as it's the crowning erotic memory of my pre-pubescent after-hours HBO viewership) -- but here, some 20 years later sitting in a crowded bar where there's so much other noise going on (not to mention the fact that I've watched and ..enjoyed this part hundreds of times since then) I catch myself taking a moment between Phoebe climbing out of the pool and the bathing suit coming off to take a sip of my beer and glance around the bar,
Which is when I notice that every guy in the place has
completely stopped what they were doing so they can watch.
[Listening to: Probot – "Dictatosaurus" ]
Comments