Blooper
This article possibly contains original research. (January 2016) |
A blooper is a short clip from a film or video production, usually a
Bloopers are often the subject of television programs and may be shown during the closing credits of comedic films or TV episodes. Prominent examples of films with bloopers include The Cannonball Run, Cheaper by the Dozen, and Rush Hour. Jackie Chan and Burt Reynolds are both famous for including such reels with the closing credits of their movies.
In recent years, many CGI-animated films have also incorporated bloopers, including a mix of faked bloopers, genuine voice-actor mistakes set to animation, and technical errors. Examples can be found in A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), and Monsters, Inc. (2001). Humorous mistakes made by athletes are often referred to as bloopers as well, particularly in baseball.
Origins
United States
The term "blooper" was popularized in the United States by television producer
Schaefer was by no means the first to undertake serious study and collection of broadcast errata;
United Kingdom
Jonathan Hewat (1938–2014),[1][2] who had a vast personal collection of taped broadcasting gaffes,[3] was the first person in the UK to broadcast radio bloopers, on a bank holiday show on BBC Radio Bristol at the end of the 1980s.
He subsequently produced and presented a half-hour show on that station called So You Want to Run a Radio Station?. This was nominated for a
Some of the earliest clips in Hewat's collection went back to
The comment made by newsreaders after making a mistake "I'm sorry I'll read that again" was the origin of the title of the radio show which ran on the BBC during the 1960s and 1970s.
Television shows
Comedian
ITV has produced two other shows, TV Nightmares, and TV's Naughtiest Blunders. Both were presented by Steve Penk, before the latter show changed to show continuous clips with voice-over by Neil Morrissey. Nightmares presented TV personalities relating some of their most hair-raising moments, and Naughtiest Blunders presented more risqué mistakes. The latter has also been criticised for being used as a simple schedule filler, often with ridiculously titled editions (e.g. All New TV's Naughtiest Blunders 18).
During the 1982–83 season,
After Clark suffered a stroke, the blooper shows went on hiatus until 2007, when John O'Hurley hosted a special for ABC that was packaged by Dick Clark Productions.
The success of both Clark's and Norden's efforts led to imitators on virtually all American and Australian TV networks, as well as scores of home video releases; many American productions are aired to fill gaps in prime time schedules. The ABC Network aired Foul-Ups, Bleeps & Blunders hosted by Steve Lawrence and Don Rickles in direct competition with the Clark TV series. With the coming of DVD in the 1990s, it became common for major film releases to include a "blooper reel" (also known as a "gag reel" or simply "outtakes") as bonus material on the disc.
In 1985, Steve Rotfeld began compiling stock footage of various sports-related errors and mistakes and compiled them into a program known as Bob Uecker's Wacky World of Sports. In the early 1990s, that series eventually evolved into The Lighter Side of Sports and continued in limited production through the early 2000s.
Causes
Bloopers are usually accidental and humorous. Where actors need to memorize large numbers of lines or perform a series of actions in quick succession, mistakes can be expected. Similarly, newsreaders have only a short time to deliver a large amount of information and are prone to mispronounce place names and people's names, or switch a name or word without realizing it, as in a slip-of-the-tongue or Freudian slip.
Some common examples include:
- Uncontrollable laughter (called, in television and acting circles, corpsing)
- Unanticipated incidents (e.g. a propfalling or breaking, or a child/animal failing to behave as expected)
- Forgotten lines
- Deliberate sabotage of an actor's performance by a fellow actor; a prank or practical joke (to evoke laughter from cast and crew).
The famous old chestnut of show business "Never work with children or animals" demonstrates two other causes of out-takes: Children, especially those who have no acting experience, often miss cues, deliver the wrong lines or make comments which are particularly embarrassing. (The Kids Say the Darndest Things series, conceived by Art Linkletter, deliberately sought these kinds of remarks.) Similarly, animals are very likely to do things not in the script, generally involving bodily functions.
A third type of blooper is caused by failure of inanimate objects. This can be as simple as a sound effect being mistimed or a microphone not working properly, but frequently involves doorknobs (and doors) not working or breaking, props and sets being improperly prepared, as well as props working in ways they should not work.
In recent years, mobile phones have been a new source of bloopers with them frequently going off. Many of them belong to actors, presenters, and contestants who may have forgotten to turn them off or put them in silent mode. The effect is especially pronounced when the film setting is before the modern era (e.g., ancient Greece or Rome). However, this blooper is rarely seen in recent films (most productions enforce 'no cellphone' rules while on-set to prevent plot or production details from leaking) but is commonly used in fake bloopers for animations.
The reaction to bloopers is often intensified in the stressful environment of a movie or television set, with some actors expressing extreme annoyance while others enjoy the stress relief brought on by the unexpected event.
Examples
This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2020) |
One of the earliest known bloopers is attributed to 1930s radio broadcaster
On an episode of
A much-bootlegged recording of Bing Crosby has him singing to a recording of a band playing "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams", when he realizes that the master tape had not been fully rewound, and ad-libbed vocals to the truncated music. He begins, "Castles may tumble, that's fate after all/ Life's really funny that way." Realizing the shortened music, he ad-libs, "Sang the wrong melody, we'll play it back/ See what it sounds like, hey hey/ They cut out eight bars, the dirty bastards/ And I didn't know which eight bars he was gonna cut/ Why don't somebody tell me these things around here/ Holy Christ, I'm going off my nut". This recording was first made available to the public by Kermit Schaefer in Volume 1 of his Pardon My Blooper album series for Jubilee Records in the late 1950s.[citation needed]
On the Wild Bill Hickok radio series in the early 1950s, a
In a similar vein, New York children's radio show host
An episode of the radio drama Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons was presumably introduced as "Mr. Keen, Loser of Traced Persons." (Bob and Ray once did their own parody of this program under the title "Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons".)[citation needed]
A popular story among Texas broadcasting circles has it that a station manager's late change in programming from Les Brown's orchestra to a religious programme marking the somber Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur led to the staff announcer's billboard urging his listeners to "Stay tuned for the dance music of Yom Kippur's Orchestra." (Many gentile DJs have urged their Jewish listeners to "Have a happy Yom Kippur!")
A radio commercial for
During the
Afrikaans news anchor Riaan Cruywagen made several live-bloopers during his long career, most notably: where the normally very composed and highly professional Cruywagen burst into uncontrollable laughter while covering story about a record-breaking frog;[8] as well as when co-anchor Marïetta Kruger asked what the word "dysentery" meant while covering a story related to the topic, to which he responded with "spuitpoep" (it translated as "spray poo"), which resulted in Kruger going into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
A
The announcer of a radio ad for the 1948 Bob Hope film The Paleface, which costarred buxom actress Jane Russell, enthusiastically promised: "Bob Hope, America's favorite comedian, and Jane Russell...what a pair!"
A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio announcer's station-identification message once allegedly came out "This is the Dominion Network of the Canadian Broadcorping Castration," in turn coining an oft-used sarcastic term for the public broadcaster. Like other blooper recordings distributed by Schaefer, a recreation was created as the original recording was not preserved, leading to debate over whether the event actually happened.
A radio adaptation of
Contemporary examples
The
Another sitcom, Home Improvement, also showcased outtakes over its closing credits; however, some episodes featured a tag scene over the credits in lieu of a blooper reel.
Hee Haw often showed bloopers in the show itself, usually with the actor or actors requiring several tries to get a line right, ending in most cases with the correctly delivered line.[citation needed]
Many theatrical motion pictures feature bloopers during the end credits. For example, many Jackie Chan movies end with footage of failed stunts, blown dialogue, and other mishaps; Chan was inspired to do this by Burt Reynolds' films of the early 1980s (in particular Smokey and the Bandit II and The Cannonball Run) that also featured end-credits bloopers. As an homage to its inspiration, the closing-credits blooper reel for Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy actually featured one outtake from Smokey and the Bandit II.[citation needed]
Pixar also has a tradition of including blooper-like material during the end credits of such films as A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc.; the latter was at one point reissued to theatres with a major selling feature being the addition of extra "bloopers". Since Pixar's films are painstakingly computer-animated, making actual blunders of this sort is impossible, these scenes are in fact staged to provide additional audience enjoyment. The makers of another computer-animated film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, likewise also created a faux blooper reel showing the characters playing practical jokes and, in one case, bursting into laughter when one "sneezes" during a dramatic sequence. However, the movie Shrek has actual bloopers that were released on DVD. These bloopers are technical errors within the system, causing blurred characters or the characters bodies going through objects, such as a bush or the crown Lord Farquaad wears. Going back decades earlier, in 1939 Warner Bros. cartoon director Bob Clampett produced a short "blooper" film (for the studio's annual in-house gag reel) of Looney Tunes character Porky Pig smashing his thumb with a hammer and cursing.[9]
The television show, Full House, had various bloopers in television specials but unreleased bloopers were leaked containing cast members using profanity to express their mistakes in a family-friendly program.[citation needed]
The fishing television series Bill Dance Outdoors has produced four videos (two VHS and two DVD) focusing entirely on bloopers occurring during production of the show and associated commercials, often showing various mishaps such as missed lines (which sometimes take several takes to finally deliver correctly), accidents during filming (including falling into the water, being impaled with a fish hook, or equipment malfunctions), as well as practical jokes played on the host by his guests and film crew (and vice versa). Some of the outtakes shown on these videos would sometimes be shown over the end credits.[citation needed]
The Discovery Channel series MythBusters will often keep some bloopers included in the actual episodes, usually various mishaps that occur on the show, such as minor injuries suffered by the cast, or various other accidents and malfunctions, which are usually quite spectacular and/or embarrassing when they do occur.
In Asia, variety shows, which is broadcast in a live-like format, would sometimes air bloopers titled NG's, which stands for no good/not good. These NG's would usually feature hosts forgetting their words by mistake and admit they make mistakes on occasion.
The Disney Channel Original Series Sonny with a Chance season 1 episode "Sonny So Far" included bloopers where actress Demi Lovato had uncontrollable laughter while suffering from hiccups during a supposedly "serious" scene, and several other scenes where the cast-members either humorously messed-up their lines, or props were forgotten.
A recent example of a well-publicized live blooper occurred during the March 2, 2014 telecast of the 86th Academy Awards. In introducing the singer Idina Menzel's performance of one of the Best Song nominees, actor John Travolta accidentally announced her as "Adele Dazeem".[10]
Acceptance of out-takes
The proliferation of out-takes/gag reels/blooper reels, especially on recent DVD releases, has received mixed response by actors and directors. While many do not mind the extra publicity offered by such material being shown to the public and others simply enjoy seeing the mistakes, other actors complain that out-takes are demeaning to themselves and/or the craft and refuse to allow them to be made public.[citation needed]
Director Hal Ashby's decision to include a blooper reel of star Peter Sellers in his 1979 film Being There, for example, is sometimes blamed for Sellers' failure to win that year's Academy Award for Best Actor (for which he was nominated). Sellers had reportedly urged Ashby not to include the outtakes in the final edit of the film, to no avail.
Among his other issues with Star Trek's producer Gene Roddenberry, Leonard Nimoy was not happy that Roddenberry showed the show's blooper reels to fans at conventions in the early 1970s. He felt actors needed to be free to make mistakes without expecting that they would be shown to the public, and wrote a letter to Roddenberry asking him to stop. Roddenberry's answer was to send Nimoy a blooper reel of his own should he have wished to show it at conventions.
Conversely, actors and crew on many productions treat the creation of gag reels as part of the filmmaking process, with innumerable examples of commercially released outtakes in which an actor can be heard remarking that a failed take was likely destined for a gag or blooper reel. Film producer Sam Raimi went so far as to commission veteran composer Vic Mizzy to create unique scores for the gag/blooper reel special features for the DVD releases of the films Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3.[11]
Comedian Greg Giraldo flubbed a joke about sex with koalas during a performance of his Comedy Central special Midlife Vices. Giraldo then made several self-deprecating jokes, suggesting the flub would be included with the "DVD extras", before repeating the joke correctly. The entire bit made the final cut.[12]
Alternative definitions
The term "blooper" or "flub," is often applied to describe continuity errors and other mistakes that have escaped the notice of film editors and directors and have made it into a final, televised or released product, where these errors are subsequently identified by viewers. For example, in a film taking place in the Old West, a viewer might spot a twentieth century vehicle driving in the distance of one shot, or in a film taking place in ancient Greece, an actor may have forgotten to remove his wristwatch and it was caught on film. Or it might be a piece of clothing, such as shoes, that change for one shot then change back with no explanation. Strictly speaking, however, these are film errors, and not "bloopers" since they did not occur in outtake footage or a live broadcast. The
In baseball, the term is used to describe a Texas Leaguer, or a short fly ball that lands just past the infield, eluding both infielders and outfielders alike.
The Vietnam-era M79 grenade launcher also has the nickname "Blooper" due to its distinctive firing noise. Gustav Hasford refers to this in his novel, The Phantom Blooper: A Novel of Vietnam (1990).[13]
See also
References
- ^ "William Jonathan HEWAT". Companies House. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
- ^ Smith, Katie (20 September 2014). "Funeral date of former Bradford broadcaster announced". Wiltshire Times. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
- ^ ISBN 0-246-13648-0.
- ISBN 0-246-13648-0.
- ^ "Steve Penk's Radio Nightmares". Media Centre. BBC. 2018. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
- ^ "Harry von Zell and Hoobert Heever". snopes.com. Retrieved 2012-06-22.
- ^ "That Oughta Hold the Little Bastards". Snopes.com. Retrieved February 21, 2009.
- ^ Jacques Lagesse (2012-11-26), Riaan Cruywagen loses his composure on the news, archived from the original on 2021-12-12, retrieved 2018-09-15
- ^ "Porky Pig Sonofabitch". Youtube.com. Archived from the original on 2021-12-12. Retrieved March 8, 2009.
- ^ Gibson, Megan (March 3, 2014). "Who Is Adele Dazeem? Watch John Travolta Flub Idina Menzel's Name". Time.com. Time. Retrieved July 9, 2014.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-09-09.
- ^ Midlife Vices (Amazon Prime Video). Event occurs at 27:21–29:45. 2009. Retrieved June 11, 2022.
- ISBN 978-0553057188.