Hiro11

I recently rewatched "Being There" with Peter Sellers. The movie creates and sustains a perfect satirical fairy tale mood, largely through Seller's pitch perfect and nuanced performance. Every mannerism and every line is polished and honed. Sellers does not put a foot wrong throughout the film. Then, inexplicably, the filmakers inserted a "blooper" reel in the closing credits of Sellers blowing lines, laughing on set, loud laughs from the crew etc.. This pissed Sellers off at the time and I can see why: it destroys the tone the movie worked so hard to create and pulls back the curtain on Sellers' perfect performance. It was a truly stupid idea to include the bloopers.

It got me thinking about other movies that had a good thing going that then almost ruin everything with one catastrophically dumb idea. For example:

Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's". A broad, incredibly racist and slapstick performance dropped into an urbane comedy of manners. WTF were they thinking? It sits there like a turd, destroying the rest of the movie.

The slide whistle over the corkscrew jump in Bond's "The Man with The Golden Gun". Not the best movie ever, but that one stunt had never been attempted before and has never been replicated since. It's an incredible feat of set design, bravery, driving skill and mathematics... and then they drop a dumbass "Looney Tunes" sound effect right in the middle of it. WTF?

The editing in the middle of "Once Upon a Time in the West". This is an iconic movie, stuffed with some of the most evocative images of the imagined "West" ever put to film, but it totally loses itself about 3/4 of the way through. Characters appear to be in multiple places at the same time, events seemingly happen prior to their dependances. It's a mess. Leone was always a little loose with his editing, but the inexplicable and impossible time jumping in the middle of this film is like something out of a student film. You basically lose any sense of what the hell is going on. the movie gets back on track at the end, but I still have no idea what the hell was going on in the middle there with Frank and Cheyenne.

Bill Murray's "brack toe" joke in "Lost in Translation", This movie is so close to breaking the spell of relatable jet-lagged, confused people lost in Japan and becoming a tone-deaf depiction of incredibly rich and clueless western tourists in over their head. This is the one point where it crosses the line. You stop empathizing with the characters and start seeing them as overprivileged complainers out to make fun of those wacky ferriners. It made me think about Sofia Coppola growing up in Hollywood royalty and her slightly skewed perspective on true confusion and true problems. It becomes really hard to like this movie if you see it as a poor little rich girl's rumination on her poor little self in a luxury hotel with the world at her feet. This one scene almost ruins the entire movie for me.

Others?

inri222

Dr. King's "plan" on how to rescue Broomhilda from Django Unchained.
I know QT explained it but I still don't buy it.

BambooLounge

I see what you did there.

SuperJim88

Star Trek II - Into the Darkness

Solid Snake

I disagree with Hiro11's comments on OUATITW and LiT.

And unfortunately BaT's thing is well the times. I'm not a fan of the from what I remember of it, wasn't to my taste but that scene also bothers me cuz it's just jackassery of the culture and how things were in the mindset of the mass and broad.

The only thing I've got from my memory is the ending of The Notebook. Just nearly kills the film for me. I just don't jive w/ that shit. It just didn't come off right for it.

davidh777

Not to mention

Ash Ketchum

The whole ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST THING comes from when they "restored" the film and put a missing scene in the wrong place. Someone wrote about that recently on either this forum or another one but I can't recall now where it was. But it wasn't Leone's fault.

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S was never meant to be an "urbane" comedy, it was supposed to be a tale of a wounded, damaged soul and her self-destructive behavior. Instead, they cast Audrey Hepburn and the whole character was changed. That was the first and biggest casting mistake. George Peppard's character was gay in the original story. The most jarring scene to me was when Barnaby Jones was stalking Thomas Banacek (or Hannibal Smith if you prefer the later TV reference) on location in Central Park. (That's Buddy Ebsen and George Peppard to the rest of you.) I still can't wrap my head around that. The inappropriateness of Mickey Rooney's racial impersonation just falls in line with the rest of it. (I can't stand Rooney anyway when he's not playing a bad guy.) I've never gotten the love for this movie. It's false from start to finish.

Solid Snake

I can't stand Rooney at all. I hate him. He annoys the hell out of me. Talented man but he annoys me.

RocShemp

In all fairness, the whole movie sucks even if you take Mickey Rooney out of it.

RichC2

Prometheus had many and it didn't ruin the movie.

It just made it tremendously stupid.

Ash Ketchum

You should see the musicals he made with Judy Garland. It's like watching a young, unrestrained supremely unfunny Robin Williams let loose on an MGM soundstage. GIRL CRAZY (1943) is the most egregious--Rooney is genuinely creepy in that one. Poor Judy. Luckily, the Arthur Freed unit rescued her and put her in Gene Kelly musicals (e.g., FOR ME AND MY GAL, THE PIRATE) and gave her Vincente Minnelli as a director. And the rest is history.

Solid Snake

I'd prefer not to. The documetaries on the Wizard of Oz set that included him just grated at my very soul due to so much inclusion of him talking. Just die, Rooney.

EddieMoney

He's 92 years old. He may technically be conscious and "alive," per se, but that creepy degenerate fucker has been dead for decades.

majorjoe23

Hey, he was the top box office draw in 1939 and 1940. Spanning two decades!

Ash Ketchum

I love how even in his dotage the little bastard took over this thread.

Hokeyboy

GoldenJCJ

The rat symbolizes obviousness!

wishbone

When I watched my Bond 50 Blu-ray set the corkscrew jump and the opening scene with the gangster -- which I misremembered as a closing scene -- were the only parts I recalled from seeing this movie on cable in the late '70s. I had no recollection of the slide whistle but the whole movie was rather daft with Britt Ekland's character leading the way.

Hiro11

Very interesting stuff. I agree with a lot of what you say. My point in calling it "urbane" is that it's supposed to be a film about reinventing yourself in the big city. It's supposed to be somewhat sophisticated and it's meant for adults. Clearly, the movie is "false". The plot is trite and the narrative pulls a lot of punches, but the film has stuck around because the basic concept resonates with people. I've certainly met people who think they're Holly Golightly. I'm not saying I like such people, but they do exist. The issues you mention are real, but it's Rooney's complete inappropriateness that stands out like a sore thumb.

GoldenJCJ

Many would argue that making a shot for shot remake of Psycho is in itself an inexplicably awful decision but part of me is impressed by someone trying to replicate an entire movie shot for shot no matter how terrible it comes out. What makes absolutely no sense at all is to undergo an experiment such as a SHOT FOR SHOT remake and then for some unknown reason adding a completely useless shot of your own of Norman masterbating while looking through the peephole!

It completely voids the reason for that movie's entire existence.

Mabuse

Regarding Being There I agree that the "blooper real" nearly sinks the film. But read the following IMDb entry. At one point the blooper real was removed and another version susbstituted. But it seems that every time Warners has gone to the vault to master the film for video they opted for the original blooper real credits. Regarding Mickey Rooney, I'm so glad that others here share my feeling that he is the most grating person to grace the face of the earth. His constant mugging makes my fucking blood boil. The fact that he still does it every time he is seen in public to this day is infuriating. What a talentless fucking hack who deserved none of fame he somehow achieved.

Mabuse

One could argue that masterbation was implied by the voyerism in the original. Isn't most all voyerism an effort to see something spankable? What's more inexplicable than the jacking is the choice to put in inserts of random shit like cows during the murder scenes. "I'm going to do a shot for shot remake, but then, during the most famous scene of the film, I'm going to cut in some random shit because...." Because you thougt you could make it better? Different?

DaveyJoe

masturbation

Numanoid

I disagree. If Norman masturbated, I don't think he would have been as messed up as he was. I think he was so severely repressed that the fact that the girl made him even think of masturbating meant that she had to die, so that he wouldn't.

dhmac

When they were filming the original Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock typically called Anthony Perkins by the title "Master Bates" while on the set.