Scarface on BET

[Captroop]

So I was watching Scarface the other night on BET, and it was single-handedly the most unpleasant experience of my life. Not the movie; the censorship!

It was terrible, half the time the screen was zoomed way it, like you could tell they were trying to crop the image of something unpleasant off the screen because the resolution went to shiz. When he was at his desk at the end, all you could see was his face because they zoomed in to crop the image of the mountain of coke. Oh, and the ignominy of watching him snort coke, with the sound of the snorting removed. What, are we supposed to think he rubbed his nose on a powder donut for some reason?

And the penultimate gunfight at the end was (I shiz you not) two minutes long. I remember looking at the clock and going, "It's 10:57 and this movie is supposed to end at 11? There's like 10 minutes left." The gun fight was basically in fast forward. "Say Hello to my little friend!" Bang! Bang! "I'm Still Standing!" Guy in sunglasses. BOOM! The end.

Wtf?

So my question is, if a movie is so objectionable that you have to cut our half of it to air it on your crappy network, why the hell are you airing it in the first place!? Scarface is about murder and drugs. If you cut out the murder and drugs, what's left? Why are you even showing the movie? Fug censorship in the ear, and all the whiny kids and hippie parents who make it "necessary."

[neverlosethefeeling]

I saw this too and was thinking the same thing. Scarface is such a classic movie that unless you can play it after like 2am on network television or get it on HBO/CineMax/Starz or Showtime you just shouldn't show it because of the amount of censorship it requires to make it agreeable to a regular TV audience. That movie is ruined by censorship.

[neverlosethefeeling]

but then again... you can always have this..

[mmmbeans]

So I was watching Scarface the other night on BET, and it was single-handedly the most unpleasant experience of my life. Not the movie; the censorship!

It was terrible, half the time the screen was zoomed way it, like you could tell they were trying to crop the image of something unpleasant off the screen because the resolution went to shiz. When he was at his desk at the end, all you could see was his face because they zoomed in to crop the image of the mountain of coke. Oh, and the ignominy of watching him snort coke, with the sound of the snorting removed. What, are we supposed to think he rubbed his nose on a powder donut for some reason?

And the penultimate gunfight at the end was (I shiz you not) two minutes long. I remember looking at the clock and going, "It's 10:57 and this movie is supposed to end at 11? There's like 10 minutes left." The gun fight was basically in fast forward. "Say Hello to my little friend!" Bang! Bang! "I'm Still Standing!" Guy in sunglasses. BOOM! The end.

Wtf?

So my question is, if a movie is so objectionable that you have to cut our half of it to air it on your crappy network, why the hell are you airing it in the first place!? Scarface is about murder and drugs. If you cut out the murder and drugs, what's left? Why are you even showing the movie? Fug censorship in the ear, and all the whiny kids and hippie parents who make it "necessary."

why are they showing it? you watched it didn't you?

[Captroop]

The last half hour. Had I watched from the beginning, I would have tuned out much sooner.

*Edit*

And if you're really going down the "well they got your viewership, so they must know what they are doing," you should know that seeing what a movie on BET has greatly decreased my probablility of every watching a movie on that network again.

[mmmbeans]

The last half hour. Had I watched from the beginning, I would have tuned out much sooner.

*Edit*

And if you're really going down the "well they got your viewership, so they must know what they are doing," you should know that seeing what a movie on BET has greatly decreased my probablility of every watching a movie on that network again.

yea no doubt, i'm just saying. If you're upset by the general quality of television there's nobody to blame but the viewership, people don't demand quality so this is what people get. Hell, HBO doesn't even show letterbox films because people apparently don't care.

Alot of times with big movies like Scarface a larger network will pay to cut and pan/scan it and then as they move on will sell that recut to smaller networks. Then these smaller networks will then recut for run-time or whatever. These old cuts are done by crappy editors and the dub quality is really poor, add that to the general shittiness of pan/scan and you have a really crappy product that resembles more a rough arbitrary assembly than an actual film. But hey, it's scarface...

[RedMage138]

Black people love Scarface. That's why they showed it.

[Captroop]

Well what they got was a Romantic Comedy about a tempestuous relationship between a Cuban Immigrant and a Wealthy Anglo married woman.

...also the Cuban Immigrant dabbles with the drug trade.

[CharlotteBeer.com]

What do you expect?

BET has an image to maintain. You think they're going to risk offending their audience by showing murderers and drug dealers?

[Captroop]

what do you expect?

Bet has an image to maintain. You think they're going to risk offending their audience by showing murderers and drug dealers?

Zing!