Well, here’s the story: In 2015, Christopher Columbus, director of the downright crazy Robin Williams Comedy Lady. Doubtfire, gave an interview to Yahoo Movies in which he claimed that, due to Williams’ well-known penchant for foul-mouthed improvisation, he had managed to put together four full cuts of the 1993 comedy of his day, of an increasingly vulgar vintage. Columbus, possibly recklessly, dubbed these cuts (which, as far as we know, were never screened for the MPAA), in terms of standard movie ratings: “A version of the film rated PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 . “(Lady. Doubtfire it was eventually released as an under-13 movie). The interview itself is no longer online, but there is no indication that Columbus did anything with these cuts, or if, in the days when movies were cut into actual film, it even physically existed. (As opposed to, say, being gathered in your head with the stuff you knew you had on hand.) But he said it, and so the seeds of desire were planted.
Cut to today, when, emboldened by his successful efforts to intimidate a multinational corporation into releasing the snyder cut of League of Justice“The internet has started looking around, wondering what other demands it can meet.” Several people on Twitter stumbled upon Columbus’s old statements and thus the call for “the NC-17 cut” from Lady. Doubtfire it has now been published.
As pointed out Snopesalthough it is extremely It’s unclear if this legendary artifact actually exists, or if …Like the Snyder Cut, now that we think about it“It needs to be diligently assembled from a lot of old parts and a lot of someone else’s money.” Certainly, Lady. Doubtfire star Mara Wilson has said (in 2016) He had never heard of an NC-17 version (although he noted that he wouldn’t be surprised if an R-rated cut had ever been made, given Williams’s love of improvisation). Screenwriter Randi Mayem Singer responded today with happy memories of the film’s “dirty diaries” that she couldn’t confirm that the actual cut in question had ever been made. So certainly sounds like there’s probably no actual NC-17 edit to the movie, as much as there are a bunch of very blue shots that might still exist, waiting to ruin a new Blu-ray release.
Meanwhile, there is another question here, namely: Really, huh, want hearing Robin Williams doing NC-17 rated material, which by today’s definitions would have to be quite explicitly sexual, in a movie where he dresses as a woman in order to deceive his ex wife to let him come back to her life? Williams was one of the talented improvisers in comedy, but also one of the most decidedly unfiltered; hearing their attitudes (and attitudes of the time) towards sex (and, just as a guess, trans people) being thrown like a hand grenade at a beloved classic would probably be a lot less fun than it sounds at first. blush.
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Still, though: the internet has demanded it. God only knows what happens next.