Okay, so, here’s the story: Back in 2015, Christopher Columbus, director of the honestly insane Robin Williams Comedy Mrs Doubtfire, gave an interview to Yahoo Movies in which he claims that, because of Williams’ well-known predilection for dirty-mouth improvisations, he has managed to compile four complete tracks of the 1993 comedy in an increasingly vulgar vintage. Columbus, possibly unwise, named these tracks (which we know were never screened for the MPAA), as far as standard film ratings are concerned: “A PG version of the film, PG-13, R and NC-17.”Mrs Doubtfire was finally released as a PG-13 movie.) The interview itself is no longer online, but there is no indication that Columbus ever did anything with these tracks, and whether it was – in the days when movies on the real film stock was cut – even physically existed. (Contrary to the fact that he was gathered in his head with the material he knew he had on hand.) But he said it, and so the seeds of desire are planted.
Cuts to this day, encouraged by his successful efforts to bully a multinational corporation to release the Snyder Cut of Justice League– the internet started looking around and wondering what other requirements it could meet. Several people on Twitter came across Columbus’ old statements, and hence the call for ‘the NC-17 track’ of Mrs Doubtfire has now been issued.
As noted by Snopesit is, however extremely unclear whether this legendary artifact does exist, and whether it would be—like the Snyder Cut, now that we think about it– must be dutifully composed of a bunch of old pieces, and a large amount of money from someone else. Definitely, Mrs Doubtfire star Mara Wilson said (back in 2016) that she had never heard of an NC-17 version (although she noted that she would not be surprised if there was even an R rating, given Williams’ love of ad release). And although the film The Screenwriter, Randi Mayem Singer, responds today with happy memories to the “dirty dailies” of the film. She could not confirm that the actual cut was ever made. So it definitely sounds like that there’s probably no real NC-17 edition of the movie, as much as there are a bunch of lots of blue recordings that may still exist, just waiting to ruin a new Blu-ray version.
Meanwhile, here’s a whole other question here, namely: do we really, uh, want to hear Robin Williams do NC-17 rated material – which by the day’s definitions would have to be pretty explicitly sexual – in a movie where he’s dressed as a woman so he can fool his ex-wife to let him into her life again? Williams was one of the gifted improvisers of the comedy, but also one of the most filtered filters; to hear his attitude (and the attitude of the era) towards sex (and, just like a guess, transgender people) being thrown like a hand grenade into a beloved classic, would probably be a hell of a lot less fun than that initially sounds. blush.
G / O Media can get a commission
Still: the internet has claimed. God only knows what happens next.