MovieChat Forums > The FBI Story Discussion > Devil's food

Devil's food

posted 17 years ago by hobnob53
4 replies | jump to latest

A poster on another thread remarked that the plane bombing at the beginnning of the film was cut out in a print he saw. I never saw that, that scene's always been there as far as I know, but I did once see a weird edit on one of the Cinemax channels.

In the scene where George and Anne are celebrating their anniversary (where the Hardestys get the telegram about their son's death at Iwo Jima), George makes a comment on how the cake is good or something, and Chip says, "Only if you're married to her, it should be Devil's Food." But on this one occasion that line was very deliberately cut out -- they even went to the trouble of putting in a brief insert shot of a previous shot of the party, in order to bridge the gap of the cut portion -- very clumsily done, too.

I've never seen that edit again but cannot for the life of me figure out what in God's name made some idiot decide that that line had to be deleted. I can only guess it offended some boob's notions of religious decorum...even though THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT A CAKE!

Jeez!

[–] gary_overman 17 years ago

Hi Hob!! It's me again.

I was, as our friends across the pond would say, 'gobsmacked' when I heard that!! I'm a Christain, and I liked devil's food cake, deviled ham and deviled eggs. I think the one word in your post sums it up for me.

Jeez!!

This type of nonsense is silly; just plain silly.

[–] hobnob53 17 years ago

Hey gary!

Just imagine if the song they were playing at the party had been "Devil with a Blue Dress On". That and the cake and we'd have had no choice but to exorcise the joint.

Come to think of it, they did live in Arlington or someplace at that time, not so far from the "Exorcist house" in D.C. Hmmmmmm.........

A satanic leap o'er the Potomac??

I was in Georgetown U. when they were filming THE EXORCIST (one of my best friends was Wm. Peter Blatty's son), and years later a girlfriend's brother called me from Falls Church, VA. I was in Phoenix with his sister and knew he had flown from Sacramento to DC the night before to show his kids Our Nation's Capital. So what, with the White House, Capitol, Supreme Court, Smithsonian, Washington Monument, Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, and a few dozen other bits of history lurking around the place, did he want to know the location of? The Exorcist house! I told him where it was and when I got off the phone said to Lynn, "What the hell's your brother doing -- taking the Homer Simpson tour of Washington?"

Personally I put it down to the evil influences of the Hostess cupcakes they ate on the plane.

[–] scribe1270 12 years ago

There are always those who want this or that covered up in 'polite' society for one reason or another. The next time you are at a family dinner for either Thanksgiving or Christmas and someone asks if you want white meat or dark (from the Turkey) you might keep in mind that those terms were invented by people who were offended by the idea of someone asking if a fellow diner wanted meat from the breast or leg of the bird. So the idea someone might edit out a reference to Devil's food cake doesn't surprise me any.

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

You're right, there's always someone with bizarre sensibilities who takes offense at the most idiotic stuff. But I'd appreciate it if they kept their censorship to themselves.

Anyway, at least this particular edit seems to have been a one-time imposition that slipped through the cracks. And it was so dumb that it was kind of funny.