Lost? Here's Part One.
Here we enter Bart’s second dream, which is the meat and potatoes of this beautiful debacle. Speaking of beautiful debacles, we are greeted by several right off the bat:
Here we enter Bart’s second dream, which is the meat and potatoes of this beautiful debacle. Speaking of beautiful debacles, we are greeted by several right off the bat:
1) A frantic child pretending to play the piano. Just go with it. If I can, you can.
2) The ‘500 Boy Piano’ that looks like it sits forty of them.
The original plan for this film was to hire 500 actual boys for the piano. The most the budget would allow was 150. It may sound like I’m disappointed by that, but the opposite is true. Even 150 is a bit much. I'm of the opinion that a few live actors and a matte painting can go a long way. I feel that it was a mistake to stick so strictly to practical effects, because that meant the single most important setpiece of the movie ended up looking like this:
This is a recurring problem with the sets. They have to be large and open enough for boys / bearded twins on rollerskates / Hans Conried to run around / skate / wreak havoc. Turns out my childhood memories of dark, cavernous voids were not based solely off the opening hellscape. Every single set has the dimensions of an aircraft hangar.
Unfortunately, the construction of all of this spacious, practical, and not to mention Seussian scenery leaves only a little budget for pianos and the boys with which to play them.
3) The beautiful debacle, the vaguely appropriate beautiful debacle that is your conductor, ladies and gentlemen…I mean, boys and boys:
Work that stick, you waistcoated animal.
Someone cranked the Conried back to 11. He’s had his Ovaltine and he’s ready to chase it with some chewed scenery and don’t you dare look away.
"Tomorrow, down below me, I will have five HUNDRED little boys!"
"Five thousand little fingers, and they'll be mine, all MINE!"
"Practising twenty four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a YEAR!"
Bart, sufficiently horrified, declares:
"I...I don't believe it! This is crazy!"
Truer words, my friend. Yet Dr. Terwilliker rebukes him with one of my favourite quotes of all time:
"But who are you to tell me what is crazy?! Away! Go back to your cell!"
Bart is then ordered to put on his 'official Terwilliker beanie' - the strange hat he was seen wearing at the beginning and will continue to wear for the rest of the movie. Having been dismissed from frantically-pretending-to-play-the-piano lessons, Bart catches sight of his pet dog, who barks and growls at him before running away; just in case the man salivating at the idea of small fingers fondling his ivories didn’t make it clear that this is an upside-down nightmare.
Bart chases after the dog, and comes across two terrifying setpieces on the way, both of which serve a questionable amount of purpose. One tells us what we already know, and the other tells us something we don’t need to know.
The first: two Seussian hands bang up and down tunelessly on a piano, as Dr. T’s voice chants ‘Practice Makes Perfect’ on an endless loop.
I’m unclear on whether this is supposed to be a screen embedded in the wall, or a robotics display, or what. In real-world terms it is a practical effect, but what it’s supposed to be to Bart’s eyes is not made obvious to the viewer.
Who, by the way, already knows that Dr. T preaches perfection. Why are we seeing this? Why was it left in? The apparent goal was to remove as many Dr. Seuss grotesqueries as possible, yet here we are, staring at these creepy robot hands.
The first: two Seussian hands bang up and down tunelessly on a piano, as Dr. T’s voice chants ‘Practice Makes Perfect’ on an endless loop.
I’m unclear on whether this is supposed to be a screen embedded in the wall, or a robotics display, or what. In real-world terms it is a practical effect, but what it’s supposed to be to Bart’s eyes is not made obvious to the viewer.
Who, by the way, already knows that Dr. T preaches perfection. Why are we seeing this? Why was it left in? The apparent goal was to remove as many Dr. Seuss grotesqueries as possible, yet here we are, staring at these creepy robot hands.
The second: a bust of Dr. T tells Bart that the years he spends at the Terwilliker Institute will be the happiest years of his life. It warns him not to try running away if he gets homesick - the fence surrounding the Terwilliker Institute is electrified!
Guys, I keep forgetting - yes or no on the Dr. Seuss grotesqueries?
I can only assume that this fence came into play in one of the discarded scenes, since we never see it in this cut of the movie. Though, nothing I’ve read of the original cut mentions it either, so who can say?
Bart then stumbles across Mr. Zabladowski, who has been hired to install sinks in all 500 of the boys’ prison cells at the Terwilliker Institute.
He informs Bart that his mother is not only at the institute, but is second in command:
Bart:
“My mother’s here?”
“My mother’s here?”
Mr. Z:
“That’s a silly question, you know very well she’s in the No. 2 spot.”
“That’s a silly question, you know very well she’s in the No. 2 spot.”
Bart:
“She wouldn’t keep me in a place like this! I gotta see her!”
“She wouldn’t keep me in a place like this! I gotta see her!”
Mr. Z:
"I wouldn’t advise it…you’ll never make it.”
"I wouldn’t advise it…you’ll never make it.”
And, pause. Here we come across yet another poor editing decision, one of the worst in this whole movie.
Bart waltzes right into Dr. Terwilliker’s headquarters like he’s at a picnic on a summer Sunday. There are no guards in the way. Not so much as an electrified fence. No death traps, no patrols, no pet dogs, nothing. Why, then, does Mr. Zabladowski warn Bart that he’ll never make it?
Let’s start with the CD that I bought. 3 CD’s, actually, of the songs that were cut from this movie, in their various forms. Yes, the original soundtrack survives! Huzzah! The accompanying footage is still proclaimed to be lost, but the audio was painstakingly recovered from various archival sources and compiled into one glorious collection. One of these magnificent tracks is titled ‘The Uncles’ Skating Waltz’, and it goes, in part, like this:
“Oh! We are the guards,
Who are terribly, terribly feared,
Two terrible twins,
With a terrible Siamese beard!
Oh! We are a thing,
We're a thing you could not call a friend,
One Siamese beard,
With a twin, with a twin on each end!
We're vicious and mean,
We're unkind and unkempt and uncouth,
We have been that way,
Since our earliest, earliest youth!
Each year we get worse,
For that is the unfortunate trend,
Of Siamese beards,
With a twin, with a twin on each end!
Oh! We are the guards,
Of Terwilliker-illiker's land,
We're here to make sure,
That the boys will not get out of hand!
Don't try to get fresh,
In the land, in the land we defend,
Or you will get choked,
By the beard of the twins,
With the Siamese beard,
With a terrible twin on each end!”
(I would like to take a moment to make it known that I object to calling conjoined twins 'Siamese', and vehemently object to calling them 'a thing'. I apologize for the continued presence of 1953 in this essay. It is tragically inseparable from this body of work.)
This song and its accompanying skate routine was the thing meant to stop Bart on his way to headquarters. Turns out I had false memories of the twins doing a musical number; that does not happen in the way that I remembered it. But they do exist in this movie, briefly.
Actual identical twins and actual professional rollerskaters Jack and Robert Heasley came out of retirement to star in this movie, and at the outset, they had a substantial part in the story. In the ‘real world’ scenes, Bart has a photo of them atop his piano; they were his musically famous great-uncles, Judson and Whitney, in whose footsteps he was supposed to be following. In this cut, you can still see the photo on top of the piano, though none of the backstory is mentioned in any other way.
They show up much, much later than they were meant to, with no explanation. Dr. T shouting for his ‘twin guards’ is the most comprehensive introduction we get. They get to split a single spoken line. They have one short skate routine (my erroneously recalled musical number), and then they die. That’s about it. As the story goes, they went through 90 days of rehearsal in their conjoined beard to make sure they got it right on set. Three months of practice for not a whole damn lot. Every actor got robbed when this movie got re-edited, but I think the Heasleys got the worst deal.
Edits happen, you may be thinking to yourself. Sometimes scenes just have to be cut. Maybe it was impossible to keep the twins in? Fine. If that’s the case - why leave in Mr. Zabladowski’s warning? Why can’t Bart make it now? There’s nothing in his way, not so much as a beard hair. All I’m saying is, if you have to butcher something, at least put down a dropcloth to catch the spray.
Do not skate gently into that good night. Click here for Part Five.
Do not skate gently into that good night. Click here for Part Five.
