Lots of thoughts immediately come to mind when Full House gets brought up, from the wild hairstyles to the daw-shucks storylines to Jesse’s songs. And when I find I’m thinking about all that too much, I tell myself to “cut it out,” and then I’m right back in the thick of it. Speaking of Joey Gladstone’s classic (in the loosest sense of the word) catchphrase, actor Dave Coulier recently spoke out about where that particular use of the phrase originated.
I stole it from my good friend Mark Cendrowski. We've known each other since we were 9 years old. And he now directs the Big Bang Theory TV series.
So we have prolific TV director Mark Cendrowsky to either blame or thank for jumpstarting the ascent of these three words to nearly the top of the pop culture pyramid in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Cendrowski, who worked as a stage manager on Full House as his first steady gig, has gone on to helm episodes of many different sitcoms over the past 19 years, from Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place to According to Jim to Dr. Ken, and he’s indeed been the guy behind 180 or so Big Bang Theory episodes. (As well as a pair of Fuller House installments.) Does his extensive career output make up for the fact that he brought “Cut it out” to the masses via Dave Coulier’s mouth? That’s up to you, really.
Not that Full House was the first time that Dave Coulier uttered those words on television. As referenced in the Reddit AMA question, that actually happened in the pre-Tanner days of 1984 on the sketch-based comedy Out of Control, the earliest original series ever produced specifically for Nickelodeon. Unfortunately short-lived, Out of Control was Coulier’s first major-ish TV role and was a pretty great kids show as far as I can recall, with all kinds of wacky characters and silly humor. Oh, and that famed catchphrase in question.
And if you’re thinking that Coulier was responsible for attaching the scissor-fingered hand motion to the verbal catchphrase, you’d be wrong. That was Cendrowsky’s deal, too.
Yes! He says that I still owe him royalties from that!
Imagine if Cendrowsky would actually get royalties every time someone said “cut it out” in reference to either of Dave Coulier’s shows. That probably wouldn’t have been a very lucrative stipulation through most of the 2000s.
You’ll presumably get to hear Coulier telling people to “cut it out” when Fuller House returns to Netflix’s schedule for Season 2 next year. (Wondering where Jesse’s “Have mercy” came from? Here’s your answer.) In the meantime, you never need to cut out checking our summer TV schedule to see everything that’s premiering in the coming months.
