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Friday, November 25, 2011

??!! / Film Today in the Justification of Every Joke Ever Made About Arnold Schwarzenegger's Thick-Headedness

Posted by on Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 12:46 PM

This is popping up everywhere, and now it's on Slog, for it is amazing: Samplings from the commentary track that Arnold Schwarzenegger provided for Total Recall, in which Ahnuld enthusiastically describes exactly what's happening on screen.

Fun fact: One Thanksgiving in the '90s, I got to describe the entirety of a film as it played to a blind person. That movie was Cold Comfort Farm ("Okay, that lady from the last scene is now strolling around a barn...") but it was kind of like this.

 

Comments (10) RSS

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gloomy gus 1
What a treat - thank you!
Posted by gloomy gus on November 25, 2011 at 12:57 PM
Allyn 2
This is why actors should not do commentary.
Posted by Allyn on November 25, 2011 at 1:00 PM
Andrew_Taylor 3
Cold Comfort brought us the immortal line: "I saw something nasty in the woodshed"

BTW the fictitious Sussex village of Howling, in which it was set, is tame compared to the real villages of Cocking and Didling, mere miles from my former home.
Posted by Andrew_Taylor on November 25, 2011 at 2:01 PM
4
mfw i just watched this commentary last night, post-thanksgiving dinner.
Posted by ckwheat on November 25, 2011 at 3:48 PM
5
Is this seriously not fake? I don't mean to be THAT kind of commenter, but it is SO BAD! Even his accent seems off, but I'm willing to trust its veracity because this is Arnold we're talking about.
Posted by Jude Fawley on November 25, 2011 at 4:24 PM
6
I did that once, David. During college, I worked at a camp for blind and visually impaired children and adults. During precamp, a bunch of counselors went into town to the movies on a night off. One of them was totally blind since birth, and she was also rather sheltered (she was a student at a Bible college). The movie was one of the Batman movies - the one with the Penguin (actually, wasn't Arnold in that one too, as Mr. Freeze?). It was a bit of a surreal experience trying to describe the action in that one.
Posted by Sheryl on November 25, 2011 at 6:09 PM
Roma 7
Cold Comfort Farm...that was my introduction to the beautiful and sexy Kate Beckinsale (although she was far from either in that film.)
Posted by Roma on November 25, 2011 at 6:26 PM
TVDinner 8
Meh. I once had to translate into Spanish an entire episode in real time of Law and Order at the loony bin. No pause button. It was exhausting, and my client spent most of the time staring out the window.
Posted by TVDinner http:// on November 25, 2011 at 8:19 PM
9
I once had to translate Ulysses, off the cuff and in real time, into classical Chinese, but in pig latin too for some reason, and since the people I was translating to were deaf I had to use morse code by tapping on all of their arms, except they didn't have arms because it was an armless support group; not to mention the fact that no one had ever explained pig latin anyone in the group, so I had to teach them pig latin at the same time. All this while someone was holding a gun to my head and shouting words taken at random from the dictionary, which was just really distracting. Anyway I think it turned out okay in the end but I might have missed some of the nuances.
Posted by Jude Fawley on November 25, 2011 at 9:54 PM
10
@6: No, the Penguin was in the second one, Batman Returns. Mr. Freeze was in the fourth one, Batman and Robin.
Posted by Ben on November 27, 2011 at 1:39 PM

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