When South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s names come up, it rarely gets mentioned that the renowned duo had their own live-action sitcom at one point. Partially inspired by classic TV comedies like The Honeymooners and Fawlty Towers, 2001’s That’s My Bush! centered around a fictional version of George W. Bush and his wife, Laura (as portrayed by Timothy Bottoms and Carrie Quinn Dolan). Each episode touched on a specific hot-button issue—like abortion or capital punishment—while simultaneously parodying conventional sitcom tropes.

Although That’s My Bush! was well received, the series underwent significant revisions before it aired. For starters, Parker and Stone were so certain that Al Gore would win the 2000 presidential election that they’d originally planned to make him the focus of the show. After Bush came out victorious, the series went from Everybody Loves Al to That’s My Bush!, but stuck with the basic premise of having the president be a lovable character with a sassy maid and a wacky next-door neighbor.

Then came the issue of Bush’s twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. Parker and Stone initially wanted to include them to lean into the family-sitcom aspect of the show, but an odd behind-the-scenes slip-up ultimately prevented them from appearing at all. You see, in December 2000, it was reported that Parker and Stone were going to feature the Bush twins as “sex-hungry lesbians.” This was based on a leaked script in which the girls apparently “nuzzle, suck, and coo at one another in a borderline incestuous romp.”

The ‘South Park’ Creators’ Forgotten George W. Bush Sitcom Had an Even Weirder Backstory

By the end of the scene in question, Dick Cheney walks in just as Jenna’s trying to taste a candy cane lying in Barbara’s lap, prompting Jenna to ask, “You want a suck, Dick?” On-brand as this all sounds for Parker and Stone, the pair insist that they never intended for the lesbian angle to be a part of the show.

According to them, one of the writers came up with the fake scene for the auditions, and neither of them was aware of it. However, the script somehow made its way onto the internet, leading to a huge fight with Comedy Central, who ended up prohibiting Parker and Stone from involving the Bush twins.

Barbara and Jenna’s fictional personalities were reworked into Kristen Miller’s klutzy Princess Stevenson character, but in the end, That’s My Bush! was canceled after just eight episodes due to its high production costs (each show reportedly came out to around $1 million).

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents originally ran for seven seasons between 1955 and 1962, before rebranding as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The popular anthology series was hosted by—who else?—Alfred Hitchcock, and featured the legendary director’s trademark dark humor throughout, as he’d introduce and comment on the stories of mystery and suspense featured in each week’s episode.

After greeting his viewers with the help of Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette,” Hitchcock would ease them into the show with a number of macabre jokes. Here’s a pretty audacious gag of his from 1955 that’s still eerily relevant today:

One of the more groundbreaking aspects of Hitchcock’s show was his attacks on the sponsors. “Keeping with the theme of tonight’s program,” Hitchcock says in his introduction to an episode set aboard a train, “I must warn you that, before you get a look at the pleasant scenery, we must first pass through one of those dismal tunnels,” he continues, just prior to the commercial break.

In a later broadcast, Hitchcock introduces a story entitled “Ride the Nightmare,” about a man whose past comes back to haunt him. “And speaking of nightmares,” he tells the audience, “here is our first commercial.”

Alfred Hitchcock Was Making Fun of TV Ads Nearly 70 Years Ago

Now, this was all in good fun back when Alfred Hitchcock Presents was sponsored by Bristol-Myers, who ran ads for things like toothpaste. However, in modern syndication, vintage shows never air with their original commercials. They also don’t get shown on major networks that feature annoying ads worthy of mockery. Instead, Hitchcock and his contemporaries have been relegated to appearing on retro channels like MeTV and Antenna TV.

Interesting side note about those networks: They’re both heavily sponsored by St. Jude. Not for nothing, but with Hitchcock’s sarcastic remarks serving as the lead-in for such commercials, it makes for some really uncomfortable coincidences. Hearing Hitchcock revel in the idea that the sponsor’s upcoming words could possibly be “his last ones” hits a little different when they immediately cut to a shot of a young boy dying from cancer.

The post The TV Host Who Openly Mocked His Own Sponsors Decades Before It Was Cool appeared first on VICE.

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In October 2010, it was reported that Mel Gibson would be making a cameo appearance in The Hangover Part II.

The What Women Want star was said to have been cast as a tattoo artist in the film, which was scheduled for release the following year. Around that same time, Zach Galifianakis, who’d starred in the previous Hangover movie, told Scott Aukerman of Comedy Death-Ray Radio that he was in the middle of a “deep protest” with the makers of a film he was working on. Naturally, many assumed Galifianakis’s issue had something to do with Gibson.

A couple of days after the Gibson announcement, Hangover director Todd Phillips revealed that Gibson was no longer going to be involved with the production. “I thought Mel would have been great in the movie and I had the full backing of [Warner Bros. president] Jeff Robinov and his team,” Phillips explained.

“But I realize filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and this decision ultimately did not have the full support of my entire cast and crew.” Who, specifically, was against Gibson’s casting remains unclear.

The Strange Reason ‘The Hangover Part II’ Replaced Mel Gibson With Liam Neeson, Then Cut Him Too

But Gibson wasn’t the only A-lister who ended up getting dropped from the highly anticipated sequel. Liam Neeson was hired to play the tattoo artist almost immediately after Gibson was let go. Neeson told Daily Variety that he was a fan of the original Hangover and was invited to take part in the next one by his A-Team co-star Bradley Cooper. His cameo was expected to take just one day to shoot.

However, while editing the movie, Phillips decided to cut the scene after Neeson’s cameo, which messed with the story a bit. Unfortunately, Neeson wasn’t available for the reshoots necessary to fix things because he was in London filming Clash of the Titans. As a result, Nick Cassavetes had to step in at the last minute to get the scene completed.

You can check out the sequence in question for yourself above.

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The 2003 Farrelly brothers comedy Stuck on You stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins named Bob and Walt. There’s no official credit anywhere in the movie, but several fans have pointed out over the years that Damon and Kinnear also briefly share the screen with another person whose identity is apparently still a mystery.

In the beginning of the film, as Bob and Walt are getting out of bed, you can spot what looks like a man’s face hiding underneath it. Though the footage of the scene that’s been uploaded on YouTube thus far hasn’t been the clearest, you can still make out what we’re talking about:

You’re probably thinking, “There’s gotta be some kind of story behind this, no?” Oh, most definitely! We’re just not entirely sure what that story is. More than one viewer has referred to the creepy image in question as a “demon face.” As we’ve explained on a number of previous occasions, it’s not unusual in situations like this for people to jump to the conclusion that something supernatural is at play. 

Who Is the Creepy Guy Under the Bed (If It Even Is a Guy)?

However, a couple of theories have been proposed since the film was originally released. One idea that’s made the rounds is that it’s not a face at all, but baseball equipment. Blurry footage or no blurry footage, we can say with some certainty that there’s no way in hell that’s baseball equipment. Another explanation is that one of the producers hid under the bed to play a gag on the Farrellys, though the source of that information is unclear.

That brings us to the Farrelly brothers themselves. What do the directors of Stuck on You have to say about this whole thing? Well, interestingly enough, they actually addressed the so-called demon face in the film’s DVD commentary. But, unfortunately, they claim not to know who the man is or what he’s doing there. 

So are they lying for some reason? Are they in on the gag—assuming it is a gag and not a legitimate demon? Unless somebody associated with the movie eventually speaks up, we might never be able to answer those questions.

The post There’s a ‘Demon’ Under the Bed in This Early 2000s Comedy, and Even the Directors Can’t Explain It appeared first on VICE.

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In the early 1960s, Lenny Bruce became the poster child for comedians getting arrested. Between 1961 and 1964, Bruce got hit with multiple obscenity charges and was found guilty on a couple of different occasions. But Bruce was far from the first comic to face legal repercussions for his act. If you can believe it, some comedians managed to find themselves on the wrong side of the law when Bruce was just a kid. Here are a few instances you might not have heard about.

3. MARTY WAYNE

In June 1946, a long-forgotten nightclub comic by the name of Marty Wayne was sentenced to six months in jail for what news reports referred to as his “purple passages.” In other words, Wayne was found guilty of “presenting obscene shows” at a couple of local entertainment venues in the Philadelphia area. What that entailed obviously couldn’t be printed in those days, but Judge Harry S. McDevitt of the Quarter Sessions Court issued a stern warning to club owners at the time, saying, “If you have to get into the gutter and present filthy shows, you might as well give up.” Both proprietors were fined a whopping $25.13 and told to ask for a script before letting anyone perform moving forward.

2. W.C. FIELDS

By 1928, W.C. Fields was a major Broadway star, renowned for his unique comedy sketches that would soon be adapted for the big screen. In one such sketch that year, a canary was made to appear as though it was flying out of a man’s mouth and proceeded to venture up into the wings of the theater afterward. Two police officers with ties to the Humane Society arrested Fields on charges of animal cruelty, alleging that the bird had flown into the scenery and died from its injuries. A judge later pinned the canary’s death on the officers for improperly handling it on the way out of the theater; in particular, he said that the thick smoke that came out of the newsmen’s cameras during the ensuing media circus was likely responsible.

1. MAE WEST 

On February 9, 1927, Mae West went backstage after performing in the Broadway play Sex (in which she played a prostitute), only to be surrounded by officers from New York City’s vice squad. Two months later, West was charged with obscenity and “behavior designed to corrupt the morals of youth.” She served eight days of a ten day sentence in a workhouse on what’s now Roosevelt Island, where she claimed to have dined with the warden. West later said that the jail time was worth the publicity and credited it with giving her career a significant boost.

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One of the most memorable deaths in the history of the James Bond franchise came in 1964’s Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery as 007. Oh, and if that last sentence didn’t make it abundantly clear, you’re about to get hit with some serious spoilers. Anyway, early on in the film, Bond is knocked unconscious and awakens to find Jill Masterson (as portrayed by Shirley Eaton), whom he’s spent the night with, naked in bed and covered in gold paint. Bond soon reveals that she died from skin suffocation:

The image of Eaton painted gold was so iconic that it landed her on the cover of LIFE magazine later that same year. Unfortunately, her character’s unusual death also spawned an urban legend that Eaton died from skin suffocation herself during the film’s production.

According to the BBC series Debunked, two things helped perpetuate the myth: First of all, Eaton only had a few small movie roles after Goldfinger was released, and retired from acting in 1969. On top of that, people were legitimately worried at the time that skin suffocation was a real thing.

The Strange Urban Legend Behind ‘Goldfinger’s’ Most Iconic Death

As a matter of fact, cabaret dancers were known to leave part of their skin unpainted out of fear that clogged pores might prevent oxygen from being absorbed. Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton and producer Albert Broccoli even hired a physician to monitor Eaton while she filmed the scene. Furthermore, part of Eaton’s abdomen was left unpainted, just to be on the safe side. They then did their best to remove the paint as quickly as possible once the segment was completed.

It should go without saying that Eaton didn’t die from the gold paint used on her in the movie. The actress is actually alive and well at press time and is currently 89 years old. As for so-called “skin suffocation,” we now know, in part thanks to a 2003 episode of MythBusters, that this isn’t something that can happen from having your body painted.

However, painting one’s body can lead to other issues, like overheating and toxins being absorbed through the skin.

The post The Truth behind the ‘Goldfinger’ Actress Who Was Rumored to Be Killed by Gold Paint appeared first on VICE.

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The animated Walt Disney musical Moana tells the story of a young girl named—you guessed it—Moana (Auli‘i Cravalho), the daughter of a Polynesian chieftain, who sets out to find the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) in the hopes of saving her people. Or, that’s at least how somebody from the U.S. would explain the basics of the film. People living in Italy, on the other hand, know the movie and its lead character by totally different names. Over there, Disney released the film as Oceania, and Moana is known as Vaiana. 

Why the changes, you ask? Disney has never given an official reason, but that hasn’t stopped word from getting around. As it turns out, there was once a well-known adult film actress in Italy by the name of Moana Pozzi, who The New York Times once referred to as the country’s “most revered porn star.”

According to them, Pozzi was “as popular with hormonally charged young men as with devout grandmothers.”

The Adult Film Star Who Reportedly Forced Disney to Rename ‘Moana’ in Italy

Shortly after Moana was released, The Telegraph reported that the film’s directors confirmed Pozzi “played a big part in the decision.” They were evidently asked about the name change at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Davide Romani, Disney’s head of theatrical marketing in Italy, appears to have verified that claim around the same time. As he tells it, the company had been discussing the issue during a meeting with Italian exhibitors the previous year.

An Italian marketing expert, who didn’t wish to be identified, told Fox that there were two reasons for the title change. “One is that if you type ‘Moana’ and do a Google search in Italy, you risk coming up with porn videos. And it’s very expensive and a waste of money to try and change that.”

The other reason, the marketing executive explained, was that “in any Italian focus group, ‘Moana’ is Moana Pozzi the porn star.”

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In 1957, Sammy Davis Jr. met a young Hollywood actress named Kim Novak, who was about to star in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Vertigo. Davis took a liking to Novak and arranged to see her again with the help of his friends Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Before long, a blind item appeared in a gossip column hinting at the two of them being in a relationship. Davis being black and Novak being white meant that both of their careers were now at risk.

For context, interracial marriage was illegal in half of the states in the country at the time. And as if that wasn’t enough, a Gallup poll from 1958 reveals that just 4% of Americans approved of such marriages. Despite that, the pair defiantly continued dating, but made a significant effort to cover it up.

Apparently, Davis would even hide under a blanket while riding in the car with Novak to avoid being seen.

Sammy Davis Jr.’s Relationship With Kim Novak Allegedly Led to a Mob Threat on His Life

When word of their possible engagement got to Harry Cohn, who was the head of Columbia Pictures, he was reportedly enraged that Novak was seeing a black man and took out a mob hit on Davis. Davis’s close friend, Arthur Silbert, remembered being there when Davis got a call from his father telling him that mobster Mickey Cohen was threatening to “break both of his legs, put out his other eye, and bury him in a hole if he didn’t marry a black woman right away.”

But according to some sources, the threats went beyond a phone call.

Ovid Demaris and Ed Reid’s The Green Felt Jungle, originally published in 1963, claims that Davis was actually kidnapped by a couple of “Chicago thugs,” and that the person who arranged for the kidnapping died shortly thereafter (Cohn suffered a fatal heart attack in February 1958). The story made its way to the press as a result, and a newspaper clipping about it ended up in Davis’s FBI file. However, because the alleged incident wasn’t reported to authorities, an internal memo suggests that Davis might’ve planted the story for publicity. 

Whatever the case may be, Davis married a black woman by the name of Loray White in January 1958. They divorced the following year.

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Harrison Ford came dangerously close to making his final film appearance in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. While preparing to shoot a scene aboard the Millennium Falcon one day, Ford was knocked to the ground and crushed beneath the ship’s hydraulic metal door, which was described as weighing about the same as a small car. The door was reportedly operated by another person, who’d apparently pressed the button to make it go down while Ford was standing underneath it. Ford was badly injured and unable to continue working on the movie for two months.

As Ford told Jonathan Ross in December 2015, the design of the Millennium Falcon had evolved significantly since the 1970s, when the doors were controlled using a pulley system. “Now we had lots of money and technology, and so they built a f—king great hydraulic door which closed at light speed,” Ford explained. “And the door came down and hit me on my left hip because I was turned to my right,” he continued. “And then it flung my left leg up and it dislocated my ankle, and as it drove me down to the floor, my legs slapped on the ramp up to the Millennium Falcon and broke both bones in my leg.”

Harrison Ford Was Crushed by a Millennium Falcon Door and Nearly Died

The company responsible for the incident, Foodles Production, was later fined £1.6 million (more than $2 million). During one hearing, prosecutor Andrew Marshall said that the accident nearly cost Ford his life. “It could have killed somebody,” Marshall told the court. “The fact that it didn’t was because an emergency stop was activated.” Had it not been pressed in time, Marshall asserted, things might’ve turned out very differently.

Though production was halted as Ford recovered, the actor was eventually able to complete his scenes. Director J.J. Abrams recalled that Ford’s injuries had actually helped bond the crew on set. When Ford finally returned, Abrams claimed he was “better and stronger than ever.” Abrams went on to say that there was “a fire” in Ford’s eyes that you can see in the final cut of the movie.

The post Harrison Ford Was Nearly Killed by the Millennium Falcon While Filming This ‘Star Wars’ Film appeared first on VICE.

Though 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas ended up being a huge hit, the experience of making it was not a fun one for Jim Carrey. In fact, the comedian came very close to walking away from the production early on because of the costume and the grueling makeup process. “The first day in makeup took eight hours,” Carrey told Vulture in 2025. “And I went into the trailer and asked Ron [Howard] and Brian [Grazer] to come in, and I told them that I wouldn’t be able to do the movie and I was quitting.”

Carrey even offered to pay back all the money he’d gotten for the role—with interest. Things got so bad on set that Carrey started having panic attacks in between takes. Howard remembered seeing Carrey lying on the floor breathing into a brown paper bag at one point. Finally, Grazer found a man named Richard Marcinko, who’d trained CIA officers and special-ops people to endure torture (he also developed SEAL Team Six). 

Jim Carrey Nearly Quit ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ Because the Makeup Was So Brutal

Marcinko was very instrumental in getting Carrey through the movie. “He gave me a litany of things that I could do when I began to spiral,” Carrey explained. Among Marcinko’s suggestions for Carrey were punching himself in the leg as hard as he could, punching a friend in the arm, and smoking cigarettes as much as possible. “There are pictures of me as the Grinch sitting in a director’s chair with a long cigarette holder,” Carrey recalled. “I had to have a holder, because the yak hair would catch on fire if it got too close.”

Interestingly, another thing Carrey credits with putting him at ease was listening to the Bee Gees. Carrey said that they eventually got the makeup process down to just three hours, and he spent that time going through the entire Bee Gees catalog. According to Carrey, their “joyful” music really helped take the edge off. “I’ve never met [Bee Gees singer] Barry Gibb, but I want to thank him,” Carrey joked.

The post Jim Carrey Needed a Special-Ops Trainer to Get Through Filming ‘The Grinch’ appeared first on VICE.

The Beatles had a pretty casual attitude about sex, by their own admission. And, as it turns out, there were plenty of occasions where the different members witnessed each other getting down and dirty. Paul McCartney, for example, recalled how he’d once walked in on John Lennon and saw “a little bottom bobbing up and down with a girl underneath him.” McCartney went on to say, “It was perfectly normal. You’d go, ‘Oh…sorry,’ and back out the room.”

But that’s nothing compared to what happened the night George Harrison lost his virginity. As Harrison explained in 2000’s The Beatles Anthology, sex wasn’t easy to come by for them in England during the late 1950s. “The girls would all wear brassieres and corsets, which seemed like reinforced steel,” Harrison remembered. That all changed in the ‘60s, when he and the rest of the band were invited to play in Hamburg, Germany.

The Rest of the Beatles Were There When George Harrison Lost His Virginity

While in town, the quartet—which was then made up of Harrison, McCartney, Lennon and drummer Pete Best—shared a room. Harrison met a buxom German dancer at one point, and that’s where things start to get a little weird. After bringing the girl back to the room, Harrison found his other bandmates in their beds. For whatever reason, this didn’t deter the teenage Harrison, who was a virgin up until that point, and he proceeded to have sex with the young woman anyway.

According to Harrison, the rest of the Beatles watched as he did his thing—to some extent, anyway. “We were in bunk beds,” Harrison revealed. “They couldn’t really see anything because I was under the covers, but after I’d finished, they all applauded and cheered,” he continued. “At least they kept quiet while I was doing it,” Harrison joked.

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Jesus might’ve taken a serious beating in the 2004 Mel Gibson epic The Passion of the Christ, but the actor who played him didn’t exactly get off scot-free himself. While filming the final shot in the movie back in 2003, Jim Caviezel, who starred as Jesus, was struck by lightning, along with production assistant Jan Michelini, who’d also been struck earlier in the shoot. Producer Steve McEveety described the second incident to Variety, saying, “I’m about a hundred feet away from them when I glance over and see smoke coming out of Caviezel’s ears.” 

Though it was reported at the time that neither Caviezel nor Michelini were badly hurt, that didn’t end up being true in Caviezel’s case. The effects of the lightning strike eventually led to two different heart surgeries for the actor, along with “lots of medication.” It wasn’t until the second procedure in 2014 that Caviezel says his problems were “finally corrected.” However, even that wasn’t without its hiccups.

Jim Caviezel Was Struck by Lightning While Playing Jesus, Leading to Years of Heart Problems

Despite crediting the 2014 surgery with saving his life, he explained to Shawn Ryan in 2023 that it, ironically enough, killed him as well—temporarily, that is. “I died on the operating table,” Caviezel revealed. “They brought me back. But I was supposed to be here,” he continued. “The reason why I brought that up is I felt incredible peace and love. That’s waiting for us.”

Caviezel went on to describe his brush with death as “amazing,” and compared the experience to cracking an egg. “And then it just came out, and I was dead, and I didn’t have to breathe anymore,” he recalled. Although Caviezel remembered the dying part being painless, he said that all changed when the doctors were finally able to revive him. You can listen to Caviezel recount the story for yourself in the video above.

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By the time Patrice O’Neal took the stage at Comedy Central’s 2011 roast of Charlie Sheen, he seemed genuinely bothered by some of the things his fellow roasters had to say about him. In response to William Shatner’s joke about Sheen waiting to get into the right projects like O’Neal’s family, O’Neal said, “You’re a f—king —hole, Captain Kirk!” He also took a moment to address all the references people made to his diabetes that night, including Amy Schumer’s line about the roast serving as a farewell party for O’Neal’s foot. “I’m dying of diabetes and you motherf—kers are like, ‘Oh, that evil fat f—k,’” O’Neal told the dais at one point.

Many made note of how well O’Neal did at Sheen’s roast, especially considering that he didn’t rely solely on prewritten material. “He had to go from his guts,” fellow comedian Robert Kelly recalled, pointing out that any other comic would’ve been finished if they’d gone the same route as O’Neal. For his part, O’Neal explained that he’d been practicing his entire life to be okay when facing the possibility of failure. Even all these years later, O’Neal’s set is singled out as the highlight of the show.

Patrice O’Neal Had a Tearful Conversation About Death With William Shatner Two Months Before He Died

But O’Neal’s interactions with Shatner weren’t all bad. According to Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, who spoke to Shatner after the broadcast, Shatner and his wife ran into O’Neal outside that evening, and their final encounter with him somehow managed to be both heartwarming and heartbreaking all at the same time. As the three waited for their cars together, they had a brief chat regarding O’Neal’s health. “It was a strange place to have a conversation about life and death,” Shatner remembered, “but it was presaged by his clarity at the roast.”

Shatner and his wife reminded O’Neal that diabetes wasn’t like cancer and that there were ways that he could reverse the effects of the disease. O’Neal was reportedly moved by this, and as the three parted ways, every single one of them was in tears. “He knew that he was dying, that he was a dying man, and in a way, he wanted to die,” Shatner said. “That’s what I saw. That’s why we cried.”

O’Neal died two months later from complications of a stroke, which was caused by type 2 diabetes. He was 41 years old. 

The post 15 Years Ago, William Shatner and Patrice O’Neal Cried Together After the Charlie Sheen Roast appeared first on VICE.

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By the mid-2000s, Seinfeld had been off the air for several years and Michael Richards wasn’t as in-demand as he was when the show was in full swing. Though Richards had started out doing stand-up comedy decades earlier, he was more focused on a career in Hollywood at that point. Interestingly enough, it was George Carlin who encouraged Richards to get back into stand-up when he was struggling to find work post-Seinfeld. As Richards explained to Rolling Stone in 2024, Carlin was curious to see if Richards could build an act after so many years away from the stage.

Nowadays, if Richards and stand-up are mentioned in the same sentence, chances are it’s in reference to the meltdown he had at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles back in 2006. “Shut up! 50 years ago we’d have had you upside down with a f—king fork up your ass!” Richards screamed in a blurry cell phone video that was later obtained by TMZ.

Richards then repeatedly called the man the n-word, prompting him and many other attendees to walk out. If you haven’t seen it, you can take a look at the clip for yourself below—but be warned, it’s extremely NSFW.

George Carlin Encouraged Michael Richards to Do Stand-Up Before His Infamous Meltdown

Unfortunately for Richards, the outburst went viral, and, naturally, everyone had something to say about it, with the vast majority of people understandably condemning him as racist. But it was Carlin, who was partially responsible for Richards being on that stage in the first place, who might’ve had the most nuanced take of all.

While speaking with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the following year, Carlin said that he understood what Richards was dealing with that night. “He was being ignored,” Carlin pointed out, adding, “That’s the worst thing that can happen to you in a club—not that they don’t laugh, not that they heckle you, but they don’t even listen, they talk among themselves.”

However, despite his acknowledgement of how frustrating the situation must’ve been for Richards, Carlin struggled to wrap his head around Richards immediately evoking the image of someone being lynched. “That had to come from a place in his mind where that already existed,” Carlin suggested.

“I don’t even have images like that. Even if I got mad at somebody, I couldn’t go to that,” he continued. “So you have to either have something in your head or not. You have to have a deeply held feeling about blacks or Jews or whatever it is, or you don’t.”

The post George Carlin Had a Brutal Take on Michael Richards’ Racist Stand-Up Meltdown appeared first on VICE.

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With all the other craziness going on in 1997’s Batman & Robin, it’s easy to overlook the fact that rapper Coolio had a cameo appearance in the movie. In case you missed it, that’s him playing the “banker” that Barbara (Alicia Silverstone) pays to participate in the motorcycle race.

Just after Robin (Chris O’Donnell) sneaks his way in from the shadows, Coolio can be seen firing the gun that signifies the beginning of the competition. Check out the scene for yourself below.

On the surface, it might seem like a random cameo from a rapper who was at the height of his success at the time. However, during a 2017 interview, Coolio revealed that there was a little bit more to the story.

According to him, the only reason he agreed to be in Batman & Robin was because he was promised the role of the Scarecrow in the next Batman movie. In the end, Coolio didn’t feel like he missed out since he apparently didn’t get along too well with director Joel Schumacher.

Coolio’s ‘Batman & Robin’ Cameo Was Apparently Meant to Lead Somewhere Much Stranger

For his part, Schumacher said that he went out of his way to try and get another actor to play the Scarecrow in the unproduced sequel. While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, Schumacher explained that he’d actually gone to visit Nicolas Cage on the set of Face/Off to gauge his interest. But even though a script—entitled Batman Unchained—had been written by I Am Legend scribe Mark Protosevich, the poor reception of Batman & Robin ultimately led to the project’s cancellation. 

There were a few other interesting ideas proposed before the plug was officially pulled on Batman Unchained, though. For example, the possibility of Courtney Love playing Harley Quinn was floated at one point. The studio also wanted the film to feature cameos from all of the villains from the previous Batman movies.

To be clear, that would’ve included Jack Nicholson reprising his role as the Joker, along with Danny DeVito as the Penguin, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, Jim Carrey as the Riddler, and Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face.

The post The Weird Reason Coolio Has a Random Cameo in ‘Batman & Robin’ appeared first on VICE.

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Three days after the 1977 animated movie The Rescuers was reissued on home video in 1999, the Walt Disney Company announced that they were recalling 3.4 million VHS and LaserDisc copies because they contained an “objectionable background image.” As it turns out, two frames of the film, which couldn’t be seen under ordinary viewing circumstances, featured a photo of a nude woman.

The hidden picture pops up roughly 38 minutes into the movie, when rodents Bernard and Bianca are riding around on the back of Orville the albatross. You can check out the footage in question below, and it should go without saying that it’s NSFW:

A Disney spokesperson said that the offending image was placed in the film more than 20 years earlier, but declined to reveal who was responsible. This marked the first time that a Disney release was recalled for such a reason. According to the company, they opted to take action in order to keep their promise to customers that the brand could be trusted to provide them with “the finest in family entertainment.” The Rescuers was later reissued with the nudity removed.

Over the years, many have understandably wondered about the person who decided to sneak a topless woman into a beloved children’s movie, and what their motivation was. In 2023, Eddie Bowley of the Eddache YouTube channel claimed that a background artist named Ann Guenther was the culprit. The source of this information, Bowley says, is animator Tom Sito, who worked on Disney classics like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Sito knew Guenther personally and apparently heard it from her directly.

As for the why of it all, Bowley uncovered that Guenther was passed over for a promotion at Disney in favor of a man she’d trained for the position—this was reportedly because they didn’t want a woman to have the job. The Rescuers was the last movie Guenther worked on for the company prior to being let go, which would appear to suggest that she did it out of revenge. However, when Bowley ran the idea past Sito, he was informed that it was merely an in-joke on Guenther’s part.

Furthermore, Sito told Bowley, “Animators have been putting things like this in cartoons since the 1930s.”

The post There Was a Topless Woman Hiding in This Classic Disney Movie for Decades appeared first on VICE.

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Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed that Jim Carrey will be starring in a new live-action film adaptation of The Jetsons. Longtime fans of the original Hanna-Barbera cartoon will no doubt recall that this isn’t the first time Hollywood has attempted to bring the characters to the big screen.

Paramount tried to get something going as far back as 1985, but nothing ever came of it:

Made-for-TV movies like The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones followed in the late ‘80s, but the only theatrically released film the franchise has gotten to date was 1990’s Jetsons: The Movie. However, the long-awaited adaptation wasn’t well-received, and poor ticket sales prevented it from making a profit at the time. That’s in addition to the two dark clouds hanging over the film’s production. And just in case viewers hadn’t heard, the end credits made sure to hit them with this somber reminder that we lost the two lead voice actors before the movie was completed:

Before Jim Carrey’s ‘Jetsons’ Movie, the Franchise Had a Tragic Big-Screen Debut

For the uninitiated, we’re not talking about two nobodies who happened to land these parts. George O’Hanlon and Mel Blanc had been voicing George Jetson and his boss, Cosmo Spacely, respectively, since The Jetsons debuted in 1962. They also came back to reprise the roles for the 1985 revival series and the aforementioned TV films. Jetsons: The Movie would be the last project either of them worked on.

O’Hanlon suffered a stroke in the studio and passed away just after he finished recording his lines. He was 76 years old. Blanc was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center a few months later, where he died from heart disease and emphysema at the age of 81. Jeff Bergman, who eventually replaced Blanc as the voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, was brought in to complete the dialogue for Blanc and O’Hanlon’s characters following their deaths.

The post The First ‘Jetsons’ Movie Has a Surprisingly Dark Production History appeared first on VICE.

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On March 27, 1985, comedian and future Law & Order: SVU star Richard Belzer welcomed Mr. T and Hulk Hogan—who were promoting WrestleMania I—onto his short-lived talk show Hot Properties. Belzer interviewed Mr. T first that night, and things turned combative pretty early on in their conversation. When Belzer asked if the violence on Mr. T’s popular action series The A-Team was antithetical to his image, Mr. T dismissed the question because of Belzer’s use of a big word. “I’m a street brother,” Mr. T started to say, before Belzer interjected, telling him, “I’m from the street, too. I learned that word myself, not in college.”

Hogan evidently wasn’t happy with the way Belzer was talking to Mr. T, and made his feelings clear by the time his segment came around. Throughout the course of Hogan’s interview, he referred to Belzer as “cocky,” a “little dude,” and a “coward.” Finally, Belzer asked the pair to demonstrate some wrestling moves for him, to which Mr. T replied, “We ain’t showing you nothin’!” Belzer then stood up and pointed to Hogan, saying, “I’m talking to him, man, OK?”

Richard Belzer Sued Hulk Hogan After a Wrestling Move Went Horribly Wrong

After consulting with Mr. T, Hogan decided to oblige Belzer, and the two walked over to the side of the stage. From there, Hogan explained that the floor was hard and he didn’t want Belzer to get hurt, so he was going to use a simple front chin lock on him. “You just tell me, brother, when you want him to quit squealing,” Hogan joked to Mr. T, who was sitting off-screen. Within seconds of Hogan applying the hold on Belzer, the comedian’s body went limp, and Hogan let go, causing Belzer to drop to the ground and hit his head.

The impact cut the back of Belzer’s head open, requiring him to get nine stitches. “[Hogan] came very close to killing me,” Belzer said years later. “I was told by a sports medicine expert that if I had fallen a few inches either way I could be crippled for life, I could have been dead.” Belzer sued Hogan, Mr. T, Vince McMahon, and the WWF over the incident and received $400,000 in a 1990 settlement. 

You can watch the entire 1985 episode of Hot Properties with Hogan and Mr. T below.

The post 41 Years Ago, Hulk Hogan Choked Richard Belzer Unconscious and Left Him Bleeding on Live TV appeared first on VICE.

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On December 5, 1992, Saturday Night Live opened up with a Wayne’s World sketch in which Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey) count down the top ten things they love about Bill Clinton. Among the items on their list are universal healthcare, investment in infrastructure, and the president-elect’s huge head. But modern-day viewers will no doubt notice a glaring omission by the time Wayne and Garth get to the number one entry: number two was completely skipped over. All you can tell from the edited version on SNL’s official YouTube channel is that the item in question had something to do with Chelsea Clinton:

During the original broadcast, Wayne had the following to say about Chelsea, who was 12 years old at the time: “While it is true that adolescence thus far has been unkind, we think she’s a future fox.” Myers reflected on the deleted gag in 1999, saying that he’d had horrible acne as a kid and was sensitive to what Chelsea was going through.

“She had the adolescent face, the kind of please-don’t-look-at-me face, and that was my adolescence,” Myers explained. For that reason, he worried that the joke would be misinterpreted and asked to have it taken out.

The Wayne’s World Sketch That Made ‘SNL’ Issue a Rare Apology

However, the producers told Myers that if it got a laugh in the dress rehearsal, it would stay in, and that’s precisely what happened. Come Monday morning, the gag had predictably sparked outrage, which Myers said was mortifying because it wasn’t done with ill intent. As a result, Myers made the unusual decision to write Hillary Clinton a letter apologizing for the joke.

Though it was never officially acknowledged by the Clintons, word eventually got back to Myers that it was appreciated and understood.

SNL showrunner Lorne Michaels even issued a rare apology of his own in response to the backlash. “We felt, upon reflection, that if it was in any way hurtful, it wasn’t worth it,” Michaels said of the offending joke, which hasn’t been seen since it originally aired. “She’s a kid, a kid who didn’t choose to be in public life.”

Bill Clinton shared similar sentiments, telling People, “I think you gotta be pretty insensitive to make fun of an adolescent child. I think there is something pretty off-center with people who do that.”

The post 34 Years Ago, ‘SNL’ Apologized for This Wayne’s World Joke About Chelsea Clinton appeared first on VICE.

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