Movie Minutiae

Let me introduce you to the term Automatic Dialogue Replacement, or ADR. This is the process where some films re-record dialogue differently because the original take is deemed unusable. The reasons for this can be background noise or the desire for a different inflection to a line. All of this is competently done by most films, but sometimes even the biggest budget blockbuster gets caught with it's pants down.

Recently, Mrs. Mosley and I watched Men in Black again on our DVD copy. There is a scene where Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) describes the alien bad guy to new recruit Jay (Will Smith). The website Sci Fi Scripts has archived the "final draft" of the script. Here is the scene as it appears in that draft:

Jay: I'm gonna jump way past you and just guess that this is bad. Right?

Kay: Bugs thrive on carnage, Tiger. They consume, infest and destroy. They live off the death and decay of other species.

Jay: So basically you have a racial problem with all insect-based life forms?

Kay: Listen, kid -- imagine a giant cockroach five times smarter than Albert Einstein, four times stronger than an ox, nine times meaner than hell, strutting his stuff around Manhattan Island in his brand new Edgar suit. Does that sound like fun?

Jay: What do we do?

Kay: With a bug in town? Watch the morgues.

Now, here's the scene as it actually appears in the film:

Jay: I'm gonna jump way past you and just guess that this is bad. Right?

Kay: Bugs thrive on carnage, Tiger. They consume, infest and destroy. They live off the death and decay of other species. Imagine a giant cockroach, with unlimited strength, a massive inferiority complex, and a real short temper, is tear-assing around Manhattan Island in a brand-new Edgar suit. That sound like fun?

Jay: What do we do?

Kay: With a bug in town? Watch the morgues.

This change never would have occurred to me if it weren't for how obvious the ADR is on repeat viewings. The camera cuts away from Kay to a prolonged shot of Jay during the sentence beginning with "Imagine". First off, the audio of Kay's voice is slightly, but noticeably, different from his speech before and after the cut. The other telling sign is Jay who (a) most of the time isn't looking back in Kay's direction and (b) doesn't seem to be reacting to what Kay is saying. In fact, he looks bored, and not even in a comical way.

My initial reaction after comparing the two was that the ADR was done to improve the dialogue, and it is an improvement. The original line is incredibly clunky with the word "times" used so many...uh...times. But could there also have been some thin-skinned production person who made an argument that Jay's "racial" line could be offensive. Yeah, I know, I don't understand the logic either, but it's just a hunch I have.

I've come away with two conclusions after all of this. First, after all the fun poked by the guys at MST3K at low budget wonders with awful audio synchronization, it's humbling to see the same type of goof in a 90 million dollar film. And second, I really need to get a damn life.