Christmas is just around the corner, so I thought that the thing my 95 percent male
audience would like most in their algorithmically filled YouTube stocking was a video essay about
the Christmas romantic comedy classic that everyone loves to hate, or hates to love.
Gah, come on get a grip. Because whatever you think about
the movie, you can’t deny that Love Actually is among the most enduring
and popular Christmas movies of the modern age, but we’re not here to talk about the movie.
We’re here to talk about its deleted scenes, because if there’s one thing the world needs
more of right now, its Love, Actually. Some of these deleted scenes are excellent,
some are fine, one involves gymnastics, and one is just…farts.
[fart noise] Also Rowan Atkinson
was originally supposed to be a literal angel – yep, we’ll come back to that.
Also, these deleted scenes are only available on the DVD which means I had to buy this specially,
and it also explains why their image quality isn’t that great.
Love Actually was moderately successful on its release despite not getting much critical acclaim,
but it really came into its own as a home video staple – it was the most rented DVD in 2004. That
popularity has continued, and like clockwork every year, interest spikes as the holidays approach.
Now, I’m not going to pretend that Love Actually is some epic masterpiece of perfect film-making,
with some hidden depth to it. And that’s fine. Not every movie can be Citizen Kane, but not
every movie should be Citizen Kane. You can enjoy trashy crowd-pleasing movies for what they are
and not feel like it’s some guilty pleasure. This is shit, isn’t it?
Yep, solid gold shit maestro! I’m also not here to either defend
Love Actually’s more controversial elements, or to highlight what those are. Others have done
both of those things better than I could, and I’ve linked to some sources in the description if you
want to engage in that particular debate. I like Love Actually because it does exactly
what it sets out to do – be a funny, light hearted and entertaining feel-good holiday movie. No more,
no less. If you think it’s funny, light hearted, and entertaining then good for you – the movie has
done its job. If you don’t like it, that’s fine too but this probably isn’t the video for you.
Oh Jesus, not that crap again! So with that out of the way, let’s look
at Love Actually’s deleted scenes. See, originally Love Actually was three and a half hours long.
To bring this to a manageable length, the first thing writer and director Richard Curtis did was
cut a single scene from each story, and generally the ones he chose to cut made sense because,
while entertaining, they didn’t really add anything to the overall film.
Take, for example, the deleted scene when Billy Mack and his manager Joe – ugliest man in the
world – are trying to convince the record label to help promote the new single. Which goes about
as well as could be expected. And how old a re you Gina? 12?
Actually I’m 24. How old are you? I’m 94.
Have you ever given a very old man a bl*wjob? Now, like all of Bill Nighy’s scenes this is very
funny, but it doesn’t really add anything so if you line it up with all of his other scenes,
it makes sense to be the one to cut if you’re looking to trim the runtime.
Needs a bit of editing. Now, the eagle-eyed viewers
among you will notice that Gina appears in in the final cut as an unnamed character.
This shows how the original version just helped knit the overall story together in
a bit more detail through side characters like Gina, or Sarah’s sick brother, who features in
another, more serious deleted scene. In the final cut he only appears here and
in this montage, but he is a constant presence in Sarah’s life. Unlike the Billy Mack scene,
this one doesn’t have any comedy in it, but it does show us a bit more the depth of their
relationship and the amount she cares for him. This scene establishes that she is the only one
who is there for him, and it helps us understand her behaviour later in the film, even if we may
still not agree with her actions. Everything’s great.
Great. I’m in hell. I also think that line
of her brother’s could have been one of the most powerful moments in the movie,
and it’s a shame we didn’t get to see this side of his character. But
I think the problem with including this scene would have been one of tone.
Unlike the scene with Emma Thompson’s character later in the film where we stay with her grief,
this one is too short to have the character moment linger.
We’d have just had to cut away to another story, and I don’t think that would have
worked very well for either the character moment, or whichever scene came after it.
For example, what if it cut to one of the deleted scenes that were intended expand on the
relationship between Mark and Mia. In the final movie, the extent of their connection is this:
Think I’ve found a venue, friend of mine works there.
As long as your boyfriend doesn’t mind. Not my boyfriend.
Well, there were three deleted scenes expanding on this friendship. The first sees Mia and Mark
unwrapping the new exhibition. Now obviously I need to censor this because
Won’t someone please think of the children But you know what these paintings show.
Oh god, it’s p*rn, it’s just p*rn! The other deleted scene with these
characters expands on Mia’s storyline. I’m thinking of having an affair with my boss.
Is he married? Yes.
I think it was the correct decision to cut these scenes because even though it
gives us some more context to Mia, we don’t need this backstory to understand what she
is doing in the main storyline. Similarly Mark’s friendship with Mia
adds nothing to his story, which is about him being in love with Kiera
Knightly, and frankly who can blame him. So again, these are funny scenes if we know
these characters, but in my opinion it was justified to cut them out.
But I do think the third scene with these two could have stayed in the film.
It’s only 60 seconds so not too heavy on the overall runtime, but what it does do is both
establish the Mia and Mark connection more explicitly than the final film does, while
building on Harry and Karen’s marriage and also planting the seed for Harry’s affair with Mia.
One of the reasons the affair storyline leads to what is unanimously regarded as the best
but saddest scene in the movie is because Harry and Karen are clearly established to
have a happy marriage. We see this in the deleted scenes too, both the one I
have just shown, as well as this one. When did my bottom stop being my bottom?
Don’t be rude. I’ve invested a lot of time and emotion into that bottom.
But to me, this is more like the Billy Mack scene from earlier. It’s entertaining because
we already know and like these characters, but if you’re an editor trying to trim the runtime,
it doesn’t really add anything to the overall film that this scene doesn’t.
Now which doll should we give Emily’s little friend Daisy,
the one that looks like a transvestite or the one that looks like a dominatrix?
But the reason the two scenes I’ve just talked about were deleted was because they relate in
part to Karen and Harry’s son, Bernard. Bernard is mentioned in the movie, but his main scenes were
all pretty much removed for pacing reasons. The main one is when Karen is called into school
by the headmistress to scold Bernard for an essay he wrote about his Christmas wish.
I wish, that for just one day, that you could see people’ farts.
Can you imagine, you’re sitting around after Christmas dinner,
and your grandma lets one rip! Now, personally I think the weird
cutaways with the overly comedic animation isn’t really in keeping with the tone of the
rest of the movie, but the point of this scene isn’t really about the jokes.
Rather, it’s about the subsequent moment when Karen herself finds it hilarious, and it serves
as a bonding moment between her and Bernard. This actually reminds me of the storyline
of Karen’s friend Daniel and his recently orphaned stepson Sam.
In the final cut of the film, we see Sam open up to Daniel in this moment.
But the groundwork for this was originally to have been set up in this deleted scene,
where Daniel briefly considers perusing some ahh, adult websites, only to have
them spam his computer with pop ups. Now, this is hardly sophisticated humour but
seeing Liam “very specific set of skills” Neeson panicking about hiding his porn is funnier than
you’d think it would be. Pathetic.
Anyway, because this is a comedy, his father in law stops by to
visit. Ahhrrrr….
Gosh… Daniel hurriedly
bribes Sam into taking the heat for it. How would you like to make 50 pounds, yes or no?
I’d prefer a hundred. Grr….!
Which leads to a surprisingly funny sequence, helped by the chemistry between Thomas
Brodie-Sangster and Liam Neeson. I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.
Yes I am. It’s disgusting.
Yes it is.
Absolutely disgusting. Now I like this scene because
if it was left in the movie it would actually be the first time we would have seen Daniel
and Sam interact, and it lays the groundwork for the more serious scene that follows.
But on the other hand, the movie already has slightly too many moments of Daniel
saying very inappropriate things to his nine year old stepson.
Unless of course Claudia Schiffer calls. We’re going to want to have sex in every room,
including yours. On reflection,
maybe it’s best they left it out. But the Daniel and Sam storyline brings
us to the airport, the setting of the climactic moment of the film where Sam does a big, over
the top run through the airport to confess his love to Joanna before she leaves for America.
Well, there is an alternate version of this scene.
In the original draft of the movie there were going to be lots of mentions of the fact that
Sam was a brilliant gymnast, and you casually saw him […] doing double twists and turns
[…] so when it came to the airport […] he brought his gymnastic prowess.
Here are some moments from how that would have looked.
Now, this moment in the final film – without the flips – is sometimes criticised because it’s too
unrealistic. But that criticism completely overlooks the fact that
that’s the entire point of the scene. It’s meant to be a parody of the big grand
romantic gestures of other rom coms, or in some cases directly reference them.
In fact, there’s a deleted scene that would have explicitly set up this ending
by revealing that the reason Sam spent all his time in his room was because he
was watching classic romantic movies. I think toning down the scene by removing
the gymnastics lets it hit the mark of being an over-the-top parody, without being so ridiculous
that it takes you out of the movie. It’s a lesson for filmmakers that sometimes
restraint is a good thing, and making something just a bit smaller in ambition
actually results in a better end product. Which brings us to the final three deleted scenes.
These relate to two additional storylines that were cut entirely from the final film.
The first storyline featured briefly in two cutaway scenes
that were filmed on location in Kenya. In the charity that Harry and Sarah work at,
we see these posters in the background. We would have ended a scene by zooming into one,
and hearing one of the people in the photo telling her friend about her daughter’s new boyfriend.
There’s also second scene which had a similar idea behind it.
Now, I’m kind of in two minds about these scenes. I like them not just because they
embody the movie’s theme that love actually is all around, but also because they challenge our
prejudices about life in developing countries, and add some much-needed diversity to the film.
But at the same time they’re essentially one-off self-contained scenes and unlike
every other character in the movie they’re not connected to the other stories,
so they feel a bit out of place. I think if Curtis was going to include
them in the final cut it would have been better to connect these characters stories
to the main cast more directly, rather than have them being an unrelated cutaway.
So even though they expand on the movie’s theme, on balance it makes
sense to remove them as they’re written. But the final deleted scene, and probably the
most well-known one, is one that I think should have been included. This deleted scene shows the
headmistress of Bernard’s school go home and tell her partner about Bernard’s essay.
His Christmas wish was to see people’s farts. [Laughs]
Bravo! That’s my Christmas wish too!
This is the moment that makes the farts scene worth it, because it takes something absurd
but commits to it so wholesomely that we end up laughing at it for no other reason
than the characters find it hilarious. But the scene takes a turn, because it’s
clear the headmistress’s partner has a chronic illness, and the concert at the end of the film
would have included this brief moment. It’s incredibly brave her being here today,
in light of her recent loss. Geraldine was a wonderful and wicked woman.
Sorrow is particularly hard at Christmas. So while this scene is like the scenes filmed
in Kenya in that we only see these characters once, I think this one was worth including
because it achieved the same thing as those scenes but in a much more effective way.
The characters are directly connected to the wider cast, but because we are introduced to the
headmistress almost as a stereotype in the farts scene, the decision to follow her home and show us
her own life is a great way of conveying the theme that love actually is all around, and reminding us
that every single person we meet has a story as complex and heart-breaking as our own.
Now, including this scene would also have made it necessary to include the fart
scene which between them would have added almost seven minutes to the runtime,
so while I am inclined to take Curtis at face value that the scene was cut for pacing reasons,
the cynical part of me also suspects that it was removed by an overly zealous producer
worried that somehow showing two adults in a mature and loving relationship
would somehow corrupt the morals of an audience watching a movie that includes
adultery, lots of nudity and a literal orgy Won’t someone please think of the children!
Also, I’m going to take a moment here to do a very unrelated rant about something
I see a lot when people are talking about this movie which bugs me an irrational amount.
These two characters are not p*rn stars. They are stand ins for lighting and framing. That’s why
Martin Freeman’s character clearly says: I was standing in for Brad Pitt once.
Setting up a shot set takes hours and hours, and you can’t expect Brad Pitt
to stand in place for that whole time. So you get people who have matching skin
tones and similar builds to stand there while they set up all the lights and cameras and so forth,
so that when the multi-million dollar talent arrives it’s all ready to go.
In fact, there’s another deleted scene with them both where this is again made clear.
OK, stand ins out let’s get the actors in. So next time someone says they’re p*rn
stars please correct them.