Yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon
When I was a kid, Die Hard and Die Hard 2 were two of my favorite movies. (I saw the second one at age 11, my first R-rated theater experience.) Yet somehow, until tonight, I had never seen the 1995 third installment, Die Hard with a Vengeance. Oh, I had heard about how terrible it is, how it wasn't originally written as a Die Hard movie, how the series's touchstones are shoehorned in, and how Jeremy Irons's portrayal of a German villain who tells rhyming riddles in a rapid-fire British accent often makes the movie laughably bad. Still, mostly for nostalgia's sake, and with the likelihood that I'll probably end up seeing the fourth installment Live Free or Die Hard this summer, I forced myself to finally watch the Bruce Willis / Samuel Jackson buddy picture.
It's a ridiculous movie.
Near the end, after John McClane has killed the villain, he graces us with the Die Hard catchphrase: "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker." For some reason, this led me to search the Internet to refresh my memory of when in each movie he uses the phrase. And that's how I found this gem:
Obviously this line of dialogue will not be permitted on broadcast and basic cable channels, so the censors have found creative ways of overdubbing the line. In Die Hard the last piece of the phrase is overdubbed with silence. In Die Hard With A Vengeance McClane says "Yippee-ki-yay, my friend." The most unusual and confusing overdub of the phrase occurs in Die Hard 2 when the name of one of the villains is overdubbed all throughout the movie with the name of "Mr. Falcon" just so that at the end of the film McClane can say "Yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon."
Evidently, this creative use of censorship has a small online following, as seen in this parody biography of the late Mr. Rupert "Stretch" Armstrong Falcon III, professional censor.
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I am in love with the fact that The Big Lebowski had one of its lines overdubbed as "Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?" for cable.
Sometimes a little ridiculous is just what you need.
nyc's mta busses all have ads on the side of them that are just a solid black background and in big white letters it says "Yippee Ki Yay Mo" just like that. I think even half the 'o' is cut off. At the bottom of the ad is an attribution to "John 6:27" or some other sorta biblical biz that I suppose reflects the movie's release date.
There is a flourescent pink spider crawling across my computer screen right now.
Loving this.
So, what does this week's federal court ruling mean for the future of "Mr. Falcon?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/media/05decency.html?hp
"Although the case was primarily concerned with what is known as “fleeting expletives,” or blurted obscenities, on television, both network executives and top officials at the Federal Communications Commission said the opinion could gut the ability of the commission to regulate any speech on television or radio. "
Can anyone (Flee?) interpret this for me? As long as we the viewer have seen no evidence of Hans fucking his mother and as long as we have no reason to believe that McClane has witnessed such an act and that his expletive is only fleeting, then we can say good-bye to Mr. Falcon and strangers in the Alps?
That was a terrible movie that made little to no sense. Did you ever see the alternate ending? You should. It ends with the classic line "always wear a flack jacket." I remember vividly seeing Die Hard II with you CM. You kept asking me questions about why they kept swaping different colored clips into their guns. It was the second time I saw it. The first time was on July 4th, when it came out. I was so excited (since as a child Die Hard was by far my favorite film). No one in my family wanted to come, so I went by myself. before the movie began, I was so excited i was shaking. I know, odd. None of this happened for the third one. As for the fourth one, I will probably see it, but it looks ridiculous. The car crashing into the heli. The jet chase. The guy from the mac commercials. Fun times.
john hodgman is in die hard?
Nah, Justin Long. He's the first non-black McClane sidekick in the entire series.
uhhh, yeah Drew, they may be right, and it's all thanks to the internet. yes, the opinion was 'about' fleeting expletives - as opposed to deliberate or repetitive use of them, which in the past the FCC had required to show that the expletives were indeed 'excretory or sexual' in nature - and had generally held that a single incident that was not scripted did not rise to that level ,b/c people who 'blurt' out fuck aren't usually thinking about sex, they're thinking about pat leahy (or at least dick cheney was, which the court noted, ha ha). so the opinion was basically an administrative holding, which held that the FCC had abused its administrative responsibilities by arbitrarily including 'fleeting expletives' which it had never done, without offering any explanation for its change in policy. now, the FCC has an opportunity to present that argument. that's all the opinion is 'technically about.'
however, the court then added this non-binding but clearly HUGELY relevant large section of dicta about constitutional issues, which it said it wasn't 'holding,' but merely giving as 'guidance' in the interest of judicial economy. First, they noted that there's a vagueness problem with the rules (which is a constitutional flaw b/c people don't know when their actions are illegal/finable), because the FCC has held that expletives "integral to the work" need not be censored, i.e. showing Saving Private Ryan in all its profane glory to show the reality of war. BUT, they censored like live musicians on tour swearing in documentaries, because apparently swearing is less integral to music than war. the court said, yeah, that's a pretty arbitrary standard and probably doesn't meet constitutional muster. but even MORE amazingly, the whole premise behind ALL of the FCC's power to regulate fully protected speech is that there's a special government interest in regulating broadcast media b/c it's "uniquely pervasive" and reaches chlidren in their homes (this was estabilshed inthe 50's, and kinda sounds like it). WELL, the Court noted that it isn't so "uniquely" pervasive anymore (think the internet), and that new technologies such as the V-chip present new opportunities to protect the chldren (it's always about the children, by the way). and the Court actually stated that this altered landscape dramatically alters the rationale for the very existence of the FCC...while it's not technically a "holding" with legal precedential weight, it's a pretty stunning indication of where the Court is at.
in any case, everything is a "spectrum", and assuming the FCC doesn't fade into obscurity just yet, at the veeeeeeeeeeeeeery end of that spectrum is 'fucking a stranger in the ass,' which is repeated, deliberate, sexual, and possibly excretory (ew). so we'll probably be meeting strangers in the alps for a little while longer.
i wish john hodgman were in die hard.
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