It takes a special movie and a special WTF story about that movie to pry Twitter’s collective eyes away from the spread of Coronavirus. Last night, Cats and the rumor of an alleged Butthole Cut did exactly that. Yes, I said Butthole Cut, and yes, the phrase “Release The Butthole Cut” trended on Twitter last night. Here’s why.
Yesterday, writer Ben Mekler tweeted that he wanted a tell-all book about Cats available for everyone to read to help us get through our current pandemic. As an unapologetic lover and also hater of Cats, I, of course, agree. One of Mekler’s followers quickly responded that he had a friend who was hired to do VFX on the movie during post-production, and his job was exclusively to remove buttholes that the production staff originally added and then changed their minds about. Just look at this glorious tweet…
Now, obviously, we need to be clear this has not been confirmed. We do not know for sure that, at one point in time, there was a version of Cats that included Jellicle buttholes, but there’s something about it that feels like it’s true. So, obviously Cats fans jumped on this immediately last night and tweeted about it to the point that “Release The Butthole Cut” was trending.
Part of the reason why this feels so true (whether it is or not) is because so much about Tom Hooper’s Cats is inconsistent and weird. The movie’s sizing scale makes no sense. I still have no idea if the cats are giant, tiny or just normal. Some of the cats have boobs and some of them do not. Most of the Cats are naked, but for some reason, Idris Elba feels way more naked than everyone else. It’s all over the place. So, the idea of some random VFX person being like, “Let’s add buttholes!” and then another VFX person later being like, “Ehhh these buttholes are kinda distracting, let’s remove!” just rings true.
Buttholes or not, Cats is something to behold. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, are stuck in quarantine and want your life to take an even weirder turn, I cannot recommend throwing it up on OnDemand since it came out earlier this week. Seth Rogen did exactly that last night, and he was engrossed in all the glorious WTF-ness.
Personally, I can’t wait to watch it again. I saw it in the theaters, took every chance I possibly could to write on it, and I look forward to watching it once every 18 months for the rest of my life. If there is a Butthole Cut, I encourage everyone involved with the production to make sure it gets released. I will purchase it immediately, and I know there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of others like me, who wouldn’t be able to help themselves.
