Breath, cut, all right let us reset, just keep rolling. We will fix it in post.
Hi, kids. Captain Disillusioned here, as much as I love the movie business, there is no business more superstitious and slow to change for the longest time film makers. Steven Spielberg refused to put his movies out on DVD because he did not believe the DVD format would catch on.
Of course, the various urban legends surrounding the deaths of famous actors are always rampant but then there are the pointless overly ridiculous myths from which Captain Disillusioned is forced to compromise his integrity, bend copyright laws and show for educational purposes and within the bounds of the fairy used clause, a clip from the 1987 comedy Three Men and a Baby.
It is an urban legend you may have heard of about halfway through the film when Ted Danson’s character’s mother comes to see the baby and carries it across the room an ominous figure of a young boy can be seen standing in the window. The story is of course is that of a family that lived in the apartment previously had a young son who committed suicide and that the figure is his ghostly apparition. It has even been claimed that after this paranormal discovery, VHS re-releases of the film and the scene cut-out out of respect for the grieving family.
There are only two problems with that story, one , the interiors of the film are not shot in a grieving family’s apartment but in a soundstage in Toronto, Canada and two, as far as we know there is no such thing as ghosts.
Yes, indeed as already well explained by other sources the figure is nothing more than a life-size cut-out of Danson’s character Jack wearing a tuxedo in a top hat. The sequence explaining the origins of the cut-out was cut-out of the film but for comparison the cut-out itself can be clearly seen in the later scene. It may be poor-set decoration but there is nothing supernatural about it. The slightly smaller size of the cut-out and the way the curtains partially disguised it do make the figure look like a small boy. An illusion enhanced by the all forgiving blurriness of VHS video.
The good news is that as home video formats and web video sharing sites continue to improve in quality, we can look forward to fewer intentional and unintentional paranormal hoax videos and as for the claim that the scene with the anomaly was officially removed from the Three Men and a Baby video release, it appears that is not true either. The major Hollywood distribution company is not going to go into the trouble of intricately altering a feature film over some creepy anomaly.
They will only do that to avoid sculpture copyright disputes or to possibly censor a master director’s work in order to avoid an NC-17 rating and achieve a higher theatrical gross. Anyway, just remember beneath the glamour and mystique of even the most high profile production is just a bunch of guys filming another guy who is…Damn it, just keep rolling. For now, I am afraid it is time for me to go, kids. A couple of crew members and a web series set it up to get a reprimanded for incompetence.
Remember, love with your heart, use your head for everything else, Captain Disillusioned. Hey, wherever you go, come on guys, come back, seriously.
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