Mr. T on Mr. Belvedere

 Mr. T on Mr. B?! How did I not see this sooner?! Well...

You may remember that one of the things I've complained about int the past is the confusion caused by imdb's categories for a person's credits. All the sitcoms and other fictional works are listed under the "Actor" category but Mr. T apparently plays himself on "Mr. Belvedere" so it's under the "Self" section. And that's where it got lost in the shuffle.

Mr. T is listed as being in the sixth episode of the sixth season, "Paper Mill." Wesley starts writing reports for other kids in return for money and favors but eventually learns a valuable lesson. Meanwhile, Mr. Belvedere has a stomach ulcer and struggles to modify his diet accordingly.

So I watched it... and it was a fairly interesting event for me because it just so happens I remembered this episode! I apparently was watching, and remember watching, it on November 11, 1989. Wow.

Hey, remember that other thing I've complained about is imdb's listings being inaccurate? Yeah, well here's Mr. T's "appearance" on the show.

The image quality ruins the obviousness a bit but in case you can't tell, it's Bob Uecker in a dream sequence. According to imdb this is the actual Mr. T, and don't you question it!

More Shows That Don't Feature Mr. T

In a previous episode, I discovered that imdb mistakenly credited Mr. T as being in a show that he wasn't actually in. It seemed like a fluke, it seemed to be the first and last time that I'd see anything like that. But now there are more.

The vast majority of Mr. T's roles are small cameos in TV shows. He's been a regular cast member in just three series: "The A-Team," "Mister T" and "T and T." But, as of 2001, imdb (and much of the internet) lists a fourth: "Pecola." "Pecola" is a Japanese 3D animated show for kids that has been dubbed in English for a North American audience; it lasted for two seasons from 2001-2002 and supposedly Mr. T was in the cast for every episode. But he appears nowhere in the series. Don't believe me? Here are the actual credits:

Mr. T is also credited as doing a voice (the voice of Mr. T) in the video game "Celebrity Deathmatch) from 2003. And this one is the most embarrassing of them all. Not only is he not in it, the actual guy doing Mr. T is awful. It's not even close, it's so bad.

In 2010, Mr. T is listed as playing a gambler in the series "Finders Keepers" - the episode "Casino Night." "Finders Keepers" was a bargain basement youtube "series" filmed out of Philadelphia. It has no budget or acting and as you've probably guessed by now, Mr. T appears nowhere in the episode he's purported to be in. And good thing too, this show is so bad, I would have lost respect for him if he got anywhere close to it. However, interestingly and unlike the other shows, his absence can not be proven simply by looking at the credits - the episode credits do list a "Mr. T." So imdb is not entirely wrong but just confused about which Mr. T. I can assure you Mr. T is not in this show - I assume some random jabronie from Philly is calling himself "Mr. T" and wasting my time as a consequence.

Finally, we come to "The Comeback Kids" a "tv series" from 2014 - sadly Mr. T's most recent credit, according to imdb. The premise of this show is actually not bad - it's about former child stars trying to claw their way back into the limelight or at least cling to their fame. You can imagine the show has a built in gimmick - namely, they can have loads of cameos from former stars in every episode. Here's how imdb lists Mr. T in this show:

That's another first. I've never seen a credit for someone who's rumored to be in a show. The credit really is only a rumor. As far as I can tell, they made a pilot episode and then never made a single episode after that... even though there's an entire season of plot summaries on imdb. Well it's been seven years, I'm pretty sure the rumors aren't true.

Mr. T (Not) on Teamo Supremo (2002)

 

Ever find an error on imdb?

According to imdb, Mr. T appears in one episode of the kids' cartoon "Teamo Supremo" playing the character "Mr. Gruff".

So I watched it - or, started watching it. It was clear as soon as the character of Mr. Gruff speaks that it's not Mr. T but someone doing a Mr. T-like voice. However, the plot of the episode involves a Batman-like scheme where Mr. Gruff's voice is stolen and put into the water supply such that all of the citizens in the city start talking exactly like Mr. Gruff. It seemed possible, then, that among all the Mr. Gruffs, they might sneak in Mr. T as someone sort of like an Easter egg.

But the show sucks and I lost patience and just skipped to the credits. I confirmed that Mr. T is not in the episode. 

Wikipedia confirms this. It credits Mr. Gruff as being voiced by Clancy Brown.

Here are the credited voice actors, in case proof be needed. No Mr. T.

Rad Deleted Scenes - Epilogue

I thought I'd make just one more post about this since I'm sure everyone other than me is tired of it.

About 20 years ago me and a friend bonded over our mutual love of "Rad".

"I know 'Rad', he gets the Murray from the store!", I confidently told him.
"What? That's not in the movie."

And he was right, it wasn't in the movie. But I felt sure that there was something going on - surely I hadn't just made up a movie scene in my mind. There must be multiple versions. The version I rented from the video store must have had scenes that other VHSs didn't. Years later I started buying up tapes, trying to find another one like the one I had seen.

It didn't take too long before I was investing more money in Rad VHSs than I hoped to. I'm a pretty cheap guy and it's not a cheap habit, for anyone. The next phase was contacting Rad VHS sellers on eBay and simply asking them if the copy they were selling had extra scenes. I told them I'd pay more if it did, but this also was fruitless. Many, many messages to many, many people and no one had a special copy like the one of my youth.

The recent news proves that my memory was real, the scene was real and I was not crazy. So I have that. But it does raise another question. If my local video store's copy of Rad had a deleted scene and no other similar copy seems to exist... where did it come from? How?

Well someone on facebook might have a clue:

Is it a coincidence that this took place in the Philadelphia area and that's where I am too?

So the video store recorded a movie off of TV and offered it for rental? Keep in mind, this is before the widespread use of home printers so they can't just make a professional cover and put a VHS in it and pass it off as the real thing. I guess my best theory is that they had a real copy, someone didn't return it and they replaced it with a bootleg.

The funny thing about this idea, if it is what happened, is that my friend had watched his VHS so much he even memorized the movie advertisements before the movie and I... I don't remember any ads before the movie.

Rad - The Deleted Scenes

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is finished. The end has come. The fifth and last Golden Ticket has just been found right here in Paraguay. The Rad deleted scenes have surfaced on The Facebook.

Many thanks to Corey Kearns of facebook who writes:
"Hi guys, these are the cut scenes from the movie. I recorded this in 1989 from Canadian cable. These scenes are not in the American release. Sorry for the quality but this tape is almost worn through from me watching it so much lol, LETS WALK THIS SUCKER"

And many thanks to Victor for sharing the link.

It feels like the end of an era. I can't believe it's over. Not only did we get the deleted scenes back but I HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THERE WAS THE MURRAY FROM THE STORE. I hope to ruminate on that in a future post.

I would venture to say historians will be examining and picking apart every detail of these scenes for decades. But here are a few initial observations:

• Every actor in these scenes appears to be an alien or android. Is this how the rest of the movie appears to people who haven't seen it a million times?
• Luke's parents appear to be his grandparents. Did they skip a generation?
• Luke's dinner scene with his "parents" mirrors the scene in Star Wars where Luke has dinner with his aunt and uncle on Tatooine. In fact it's very similar. Is it coincidence? Luke/Luke!
• More character development for Amy. She likes WHAM and Duran Duran and she has a waterbed. Whoah.
• When your parent confronts you in your room and you storm out, where do you go?
• Imdb describes the third scene as "An unnamed boy storms out of his house late at night." The unnamed boy looks so familiar, I thought I could name him, is it possible it's the guy who says "how about a hand for our rad dude?"... It could be the character Harold or Miles but I can't figure out which one is which.
• Bart Taylor doesn't know how to act drunk. The filmmakers were perhaps unsure of the effectiveness themselves and perhaps just decided to have actor just announce that he's "smashed". We can't compare to the script because that's been taken down though we know this scene is in the script in some form.
• The couple who announce that he's smashed is interesting - Rick and Katie. It looks like the guy from the beginning who's listing off colleges he's applying to is with Katie, Cru's fantasy. Is this coupling seen anywhere else?
• Blob is standing in the back of the drunk scene. What is he doing?
• There could have been an alternate timeline where Sgt. Smith arrests Bart for public drunkenness and Cru wins Helltrack because Bart's still stuck in jail. But events would change further because without Bart in the race, the Reynolds Twins would try to win themselves instead of taking Cru out. Perhaps in this alternate timeline Cru loses.
• Sgt. Smith charges Bart $1.05 but I'd like to think it's not for his sundae, it's the cost of not getting arrested - freedom costs a buck-o-five.
• Did Bart lose Helltrack because he was hungover? Did Bart almost win Helltrack whilst hungover?
• Mr. Pratt has the mannerisms of some sort of bicycle priest. He seems to say "Go now, my child... and ride in peace."
• Cru receives the bike of his dreams and his reaction is as if someone just died. Shouldn't this be a happy moment?
• Unrelated to the deleted scenes.... but I just noticed that an actress is credited as "Katie's Friend" but no one is credited as "Katie".

Again, it's not much, just my initial thoughts.

The Rad Blu-Ray and Deleted Scenes (Update)

Although my Rad Blu-Ray has not yet shipped, the word is in from my friend Vic... The Blu-Ray does NOT contain any deleted scenes. Yet another defeat.

For context.
Context #2.

Rad Script Anomolies #10-#6.
Rad Script Anomolies #5-#1.

IMDB 250

In addition to the current IMDB Top 250 list, the IMDB website also created several historical lists across the history of their existence. They take a snapshot of what the IMDB 250 looked like at the end of the year 2002, for instance, and call it the Top 250 2002.

If you've watched all the movies on a particular list (and you have an IMDB account), they'll award you the "badge" for that list. This is what my profile looks like as of today:

Rad - Where Are The Deleted Scenes?

Prologue

"Rad" is a BMX racing movie made in 1986. The people who witnessed it generally divide their lives into two parts: pre-Rad and post-Rad. Critics and scholars have widely hailed it as man's greatest achievement. If you don't know what I'm talking about, stop now. Go rent it and then continue.

Backstory

In the early 2000s, me and a friend started talking about the movie "Rad". After going back and forth with dueling quotes and reminiscences of the movie, I remembered, "Yeah, and before the big race Cru gets the new Murray from the guy's store."
"No."
"What?"
"That's not in Rad". My friend was absolutely unequivocal.
"Yeah, sure it is. He's going into the big race and he gets a new bike for free."
"No. Trust me. I basically have the entire movie memorized and I'm telling you, that doesn't happen."

It had been years since I saw the movie so I relented. An additional watch of the movie revealed he had every reason to be so confident - there is no such scene in the movie. It was an open and shut case, yet if that's not in "Rad", what was I remembering?

Mystery Solved

Some time later, we looked up "Rad" on IMDB and the situation became apparent. IMDB has an  "Alternate Versions" entry for "Rad" which says the following:

"Scenes included in the final airing on the Canadian cable movie station Superchannel, but absent from the home video version; a short sequence, actually made up of three different scenes, right after the confrontation at the Rad Racing T-Shirt stand. These scenes are:

• Luke is sitting at the dinner table with his parents. His father tells him it isn't the end of the world. He excuses himself from the table.
• Amy is sitting in her room listening to music when her mother comes in. They have a short exchange where her mother scolds her for acting childish. An unnamed boy storms out of his house late at night.
• A drunken Bart Taylor stumbles into the restaurant where Cru works just as it's closing. Shouting, Bart challenges him to a one-on-one race, since Cru has been disqualified from HellTrack. Bart winds up falling over and doing a face plant into a piece of pie on the table where Sgt. Smith is sitting.
• Cru thanks Mr. Pratt for him and the town getting behind him and supporting Rad Racing. Mr. Pratt gives Cru a brand new bike from his store.

All of the characters from the deleted scenes are listed in the credits on the home video version."
[Erroneous "deleted" scene removed, spelling mistakes corrected, etc.]

Note: For what it's worth, I even remember an additional detail not listed on IMDB - the "bike" was a Murray.

The Missing VHS Link

That scene wasn't an invention of my imagination - I had simply seen a version of the movie with the "deleted scenes" still intact. Except the IMDB page says those scenes were only on Canadian Cable and absent from the VHS version. The problem is, I wasn't watching on Canadian cable. I've never seen Canadian cable. I've never been to Canada. I saw those scenes on a VHS copy from a local video rental store.

The key to tracking down the "extended" version of the movie would be to simply go back to that store. Unfortunately, like most small video rental businesses, it went out of business long ago.

But I have no reason to believe some local yokel video place is special (REAL special). If they had an alternate version of the movie, surely there are others out there? I'd think so but despite lots of searching, I've never found one. I've not found one, I've never even talked to anyone that saw one,  I've never even talked to anyone who knew anyone else that saw one. Nothing on youtube. No results even from Google There are entire websites devoted to the movie that don't have one word to say on the subject. The only source of information that a VHS version of "Rad" with the deleted scenes even exists is my memory.

A Call To Break The Ice

As a "Rad" fan, I really want to recover the lost footage and see those deleted scenes. I imagine every fan would. But randomly buying VHS copies of the movie and hoping to buy just the right copy (though awesome), would be ridiculously expensive. I don't know what the odds are (or even if there are any odds at all), but I have to imagine it's like playing the lottery. In short, finding this tape on chance alone would take a radical miracle.

Other than the aforementioned IMDB page, this blog is the only other page on the internet about this subject. So I'm throwing it out to anyone with any information. Have you ever seen the deleted scenes? Do you know someone who has? Do you have any information whatsoever about the existence of VHS versions with the deleted scenes included? Do you own a copy? Could I buy it? Do you have any information about this subject whatsoever?

Leave a comment. Let's find this sucker.