TV

Live TV can be very funny, especially when someone does something they shouldn’t.

Joan Rivers was recently on Loose Women (for US readers, it is essentially the UK version of The View) and she clearly didn’t realise it was a live show when she gave her thoughts on Russell Crowe:

ITV bosses issued the predictably stern press release:

Guests are always briefed that it is a live daytime show and are reminded not to swear or use inappropriate language.

An editorial decision was taken that Joan Rivers should not appear in the final part of the programme.

We would like to apologise to Loose Women viewers for the inappropriate language used on today’s show.

But Joan was hilariously unrepentant about the whole affair, according to BBC News:

‘I said: I apologise. Everyone apologised. It was hilariously funny’.

During a commercial break, Rivers said producers took her off the set, adding that it was the first time she had been removed in 40 years and she was ‘thrilled’.

However, the star is prepared to return - but only on her terms.

‘I would be delighted to go back if they would apologise and give me a gift’.

In 2005 she got into a row with Darcus Howe on Radio 4, calling him a ’son of a bitch’.

Can someone high up in UK media please give her a show?

> BBC News on the latest swearing story and on the 2005 row
> Media Guardian with their angle
> Find out more about Joan Rivers at Wikipedia

Have you ever laughed or sighed when a film on TV has a ridiculous piece of editing to replace ‘offensive’ language?

This Basic Instinct video that compares the original film with the badly dubbed version altered for sensitive TV audiences.

Check out the differences between Scarface and the US TV cut (”this town is like one big chicken, just waiting to get plucked!”):

How about the safe-for-TV version of Die Hard 2? (”Hey turkey!”):

Or what about this scene from the TV edit of The Big Lebowski, with possibly the strangest substitute line ever? (“This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!”)

And what about Casino, where the f-word is said 422 times?

This scene with De Niro and Pesci in the desert finds a way of avoiding it completely (”You better get your own fighting army pal!”):

Den of Geek has noted some other TV dubbing disasters:

Goodfellas: “Go fu*k your mother” bizarrely becomes “Go feel your mother”.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Pardon my French but you’re an AARDVARK!’”(????)

Field of Dreams: “We were going to ask Ty Cobb to play, but none of us could stand that son of a squid”

Robocop: “You’re gonna a bad mothercrusher…”

Lethal Weapon: “We bury the funsters!”

The Last Boy Scout: “I POPPED your wife, and later I’m gonna POP her again”

If you know of any others, just leave them in the comments below.

> Melon Farmers reprint an official BBC response as to why Thelma and Louise was cut for TV
> Bad TV Edits
> More edited-for-TV movies at Den of Geek

The Gremlins are back.

Those creepy little monsters from Joe Dante’s 1984 film have been resurrected for this BT ad starring Peter Jones from Dragon’s Den.

Some quick facts from the press release:

• Special effects company Artem created 20 Gremlins for the ad.
• It took a crew of 34 specialist technicians and over 2,500 man hours to produce the different component parts required to bring the mischievous creatures to life.
• More than 100 litres of liquid latex and 75 litres of soft foam went into the bodies; hundreds of teeth had to be made and each set of eyeballs painstakingly hand painted.
• A separate crew was working simultaneously on the internal mechanisms to make them easy to operate for the puppeteers and give them distinctive Gremlin™ expression and movement.
• The shoot required 28 puppeteers and technicians to operate the Gremlins who each developed their own character.
• The ad airs on TV for the first time on Monday May 5th.

The ad agency Swarm - who are behind the ad - have also released this making of video:

> Gremlins at Wikipedia
> IMDb page for the Gremlins movie

Christine Lord is the mother of Andrew, a former colleague of mine who died last year of variant CJD.

She recently featured in an edition of the BBC current affairs program Inside Out which explored her battle to find out why her son died such a tragic and unnecessary death.

You can watch it on BBC’s iPlayer here or by clicking the image below:

As someone who knew and worked with Andy over a 2 year period, a lot of this programme was deeply upsetting.

Like many others who worked with him at Talk Radio and TalkSPORT I can testify that he was a genuinely lovely guy and a real pleasure to be around.

Christine has a website called Justice for Andy which you can visit here and has also written a piece for the Inside Out site here.

N.B. As with all iPlayer shows it will only be available for a few days and to UK viewers only. Although if anyone at the BBC is reading this, is there any chance of putting it up permanently on your YouTube channel?

UPDATE 07/07/08: You can now watch the programme by clicking on this link

> iPlayer link to the programme
> Christine’s piece for the BBC Inside Out website
> Justice For Andy site

Someone has made a 10 minute compilation of every single death in The Sopranos:

It goes without saying that there are spoilers and violence.

[Link via LinkMachineGo]

> HBO page for The Sopranos
> Episode guide and timeline for the show at Wikipedia

You may have seen his cinematic masterpiece Citizen Kane, marvelled at him in The Third Man, or heard outtakes from that infamous peas commercial but there was no doubt Orson Welles was a fascinating talker.

Check out this interview with Dick Cavett from July 1970, where Welles turns the tables on his host:

He also talks about Jerry Lewis and being directed by other people (such as Mike Nichols in Catch-22):

and how Winston Churchill helped Welles finance a film:

Plus, they finish by pondering whether a work of pornography can be a masterpiece and what his desert island movie is:

Have you ever wanted to check TV listings on your mobile phone?

One of the best is Andrew Flegg’s wonderful TV listings site which has listings for nearly all the UK channels.

But there is also a mobile version - written by Chris Lloyd - which you can access via your mobile’s WAP browser.

Just enter http://bleb.org/waptv and you can access the listings which look like this:

There is even an option where you can check out what films are about to screen, which is very handy indeed.

If anyone knows a US version or any equivalents for other countries then just leave them in the comments below.

> Andrew Flegg’s TV listing site
> The WAP version
> On The Box - Another useful TV listings site