Annals of Big, Weird Movie Laughs
One of my all-time favorite big, weird movie laughs - I mean audience reactions, not just the jokes themselves - is from the 1983 comedy “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (the first one, where they travel cross-country to the “Walleyworld” theme park). The
scene I’m referring to is when the Griswolds stop off to visit long-lost relative Randy Quaid and his trailer-trash family in Kansas. While the adults are drinking & shmoozing, a very young Jane Krakowski is out back on the seesaw with her same-age cousin Audrey when she suddenly announces proudly that she knows how to French Kiss. Audrey shoots back, “So! Everybody does that!”
Then Jane delivers the Line that Launched a Thousand Squirms:
“Yeah, but Daddy says I’m the best at it!”
Half of the audience gets the joke immediately — the male half. As the females gradually catch on, each at her own speed, a rolling cascade of disgusted “EEWWW“s punctuates the uproarious laughter. Soon, a second wave of male laughter erupts in response to the general female reaction to the joke — followed by yelps of pain from the men as feminine elbows jab into their rib cages. And so on, until it subsides enough to let us move on to the important business of strapping dead Aunt Edna to the roof of the Griswold’s “Family Truckster” and driving to Phoenix to dump her body in a lawn chair.
Some versions of the film, like the one I just saw showing on the Country Music Television channel, replace the word “Daddy” with “my science teacher.” (Not dubbed in, mind you - a separately shot version of the scene in which you can plainly see her lips sync to “my science teacher”). I’d like to have been a fly on the wall for the studio meeting back in the 1980s where that decision was made:
Studio Exec: She can’t say she’s French-kissing her own Dad, for Christ sake! Not in the Bible Belt anyway — they’ll lynch the theater owners!
Filmmaker: Well…what if we made it someone else?
Studio Exec: Like her boyfriend?
Filmmaker: (in disgust): NO, not her boyfriend!!!
Studio Exec: Why not?
Filmmaker: Because it’s not funny!
Studio Exec: Oh. Right.
Filmmaker (with sneaky glint in his eye): I’ll tell you what: We’ll shoot a second version of the scene and have her say it’s…her SCIENCE TEACHER who said she’s the best at it!
Studio Exec: Huh?
Filmmaker: Sure! It’s perfect! Look, she’s a kid in a movie, who’s learning something from her teachers. People will love it because it’s a PRO-Education message!
Studio Exec: (liking it) Hmm. (then) But, waitaminute: a 13-year old girl Frenching with her science teacher isn’t much better than doing it with her Dad!
Filmmaker: (thinking fast) Who said she’s Frenching the science teacher? Could be, uhh, a lab assignment…like, boy and girls French-kissing there in the classroom…and the science teacher is going around, y’know, grading them on it! And, what do you know: she gets the best grade!
Studio Exec (who greenlighted “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” earlier that day): That sounds plausible!