bloopers

A blooper usually describes a short sequence of a film or video production which contains a mistake made by a member of the cast or crew. These bloopers, or outtakes as they are also called, are often the subject of television shows or are sometimes revealed during the credit sequence at the end of the movies. (Jackie Chan and Burt Reynolds are both famous for including such reels with the closing credits of their movies.) Humorous mistakes made by athletes are often referred to as bloopers as well, particularly in baseball.

History

The term "blooper" was coined by TV producer Kermit Schaefer. Schafer produced many record albums in the 1950s and 1960s, most of them titled Pardon My Blooper, published by Jubillee (also Quality, K-Tel, Brookville, Kapp, MCA, King, and Radiola), and manufactured and distributed Jay-Gee Record Co. Inc. of New York. The Pardon My Blooper album volumes were a popular series of bloopers that occurred on radio, film and television. Virtually all of Schafer's albums are actually reenactments using hired actors - the album covers do not mention this, but in most cases recording equipment did not exist or was not being used. Some of the material can still draw laughter from modern audiences, and some of it cannot due to the topical nature and due to social paradigms having changed since the 1950's.

Besides "out-takes" or "outtakes", alternative terms used to describe this phenomenon include goof, fluff, flub, and the somewhat obsolete term, boner. Also, in Britain, they are often called a 'cock-up' or a 'bloomer'. In Britain, the term 'blooper' is often used only to describe mistakes that happen on live television. By the 1970s it was common practice among British videotape editors to compile a Christmas tape of specially recorded inside jokes and outtakes which were shown to staff across the company; the various ITV regional franchises also shared their tapes with the others and had a contest for whichever was the funniest.

Comedian Dick Emery showcased his own out-takes as an epilog entitled A Comedy of Errors to his BBC shows in the mid 1970s. The later British show It'll Be Alright On The Night, which has been running on ITV since 1977, and hosted by Denis Norden showed out-takes from film and TV. The BBC's answer to the show, Auntie's Bloomers, presented by Terry Wogan (and it's spin-off sporting-mistakes show, Auntie's Sporting Bloomers, also presented by Wogan), ran until approximately 2000, and was replaced by the less imaginitively titled Out-Take TV, which began as 2 half-hour specials in 2002, hosted by Paul O'Grady. A series was commissioned and subsequently broadcast on BBC One during the summer of 2004, but this time hosted by Anne Robinson. The main difference between Out-Take TV and Auntie's Bloomers is that whilst out-takes on the latter were confined to the BBC archive, the former shows clips from across all five major British TV channels. Out-Take TV now appears in occasional one-off specials, much in the same way as It'll Be Alright on the Night. Special Weakest Link themed editions are a regular occurrence.

ITV has also produced two other shows, TV Nightmares, and TV's Naughtiest Blunders. Both were presented by Steve Penk at one stage, before the latter was changed to show wall-to-wall clips with voiceover by Neil Morrissey. The former also singled out certain TV personalities as they related some of their most hair-raising moments, whether live, out-take, or otherwise, whilst the latter was set aside for more risqué mistakes. The latter has also been criticised for being used as a simple schedule filler, often with ridiculously titled editions (e.g. "All New TV's Naughtiest Blunders 18").

During the 1982-83 season, TV producer Dick Clark revived the bloopers concept in America for a series of specials on NBC. This led to a weekly series which ran from 1984 through 1988 and was followed by more specials that appeared on ABC irregularly until as recently as 2004, still hosted by Clark (there have been no further Bloopers specials produced since Clark suffered a stroke that year). The success of both Clark's and Norden's efforts led to imitators on virtually all American and Australian TV networks, as well as scores of home video releases; many American productions are aired to fill gaps in prime time schedules. With the coming of DVD in the 1990s, it is now common for major film releases to include a "blooper reel" (also known as a "gag reel" or simply "outtakes") among the bonus material on the disc.

Causes of bloopers

Bloopers are generally caused through human error. Where actors need to memorize large numbers of lines or perform a series of actions in quick succession, out-takes can be expected. Similarly, newsreaders have only a short time to deliver a large amount of information - often from foreign countries - and are prone to mispronounce place names and people's names, or switch a name or word without realizing it, as in a slip-of-the-tongue or Freudian slip.

Some common examples include: uncontrollable laughter, unanticipated incidents (i.e. a prop falling or breaking), forgotten lines, or deliberate sabotage of an actor's performance by a fellow actor (to evoke laughter).

The famous adage of show business, "Never work with children or animals" demonstrates two other causes of out-takes. Children, especially children who have no acting experience, often miss cues, deliver the wrong lines or make comments - often to political leaders - which are particularly embarrassing. Similarly, animals are very likely to do things not in the script.

A third type of blooper is caused by a failure of inanimate objects. This can be as simple as a sound effect being mis-timed or a microphone not working, but frequently involves doorknobs (and doors) not working or breaking, props and sets being improperly prepared, as well as props working in ways in which they should not work.

The reaction to bloopers is often intensified in the stressful environment of a movie or television filming set, with some actors expressing extreme annoyance while others enjoy the stress relief brought on by the unexpected event.

Newscasters, such as Toronto's Gord Martineau often use gallows humor to break the tension between takes, such as was the case with this outtake making light of transplant recipents, gay musicians and children with cancer.

Examples of bloopers

One of the earliest known bloopers is attributed to 1930s broadcaster Harry Von Zell, who accidentally referred to then-US President Herbert Hoover as "Hoobert Heever" during an introduction. Reportedly it was upon hearing of this mistake that Kermit Schafer was inspired to begin collecting bloopers. See also http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/radio/vonzell.asp

One famous out-take from Australian television is from the gameshow Who Dares Wins, hosted by former cricketer Mike Whitney. The scene involved Whitney introducing a challenge by throwing a water balloon from hand to hand and delivering the line, "Remember when we were young, when we were kids, and we'd play with water balloons? You'd throw them all over the place and they'd burst and water would go everywhere". The out-takes of this scene, aired after the credits of the show, feature Whitney delivering the line in the following ways:

• Remember when we were young, when we were kids, when we were young, when we were kids, when we were young...
• Remember when we were young, when we were kids, and we'd play with water balloons? You'd throw them all over the place and they'd burst and water would go all over the place. [Pause] That's two all over the places.
• Remember when we were young, when we were kids, and we'd play with water balloons? You'd throw them all over the place and they'd burst and water would go everywhere everywhere. [Laughter]

During a comedy show hosted by Red Skelton in the 1950's, a skit incorporating Red's "country bumpkin" character "Clem Kadiddlehopper" had him leading a cow onto the stage. Several seconds into the skit, the cow decided to defecate on-stage during the live broadcast. The audience was laughing uncontrollably, and Skelton, ever the professional, decided to ad-lib through it all, much to the delight of the audience, with the line, "Boy, she's a great cow! Not only does she give milk, {pause} she gives Pet-Ritz Pies!" He followed with, "Why didn't you think of that earlier?", "You know, your breath stinks, too!" and finally, "Well, it's just like the psychiatrists say, {long pause} Get it out of your system!" Red then finally broke into laughter, and the network mercifully cut to a commercial.

A much-bootlegged recording of Bing Crosby has him singing to a recording of a band playing "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams", when he realizes that the master tape had not been fully rewound, and ad-libbed vocals to the trunicated music. He begins, "Castles may tumble, that's fate after all / Life's really funny that way." Realizing the shortened music, he ad-libs, "Sang the wrong melody, let's play it back / See what it sounds like, Hey Hey! / They cut out eight bars, the dirty bastards / And I didn't know which eight bars they were gonna cut / Why doesn't somebody tell me things around here? / Holy Christ, I'm goin' off my nut!"

The American sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel Air had a tradition of airing out-takes over the credit sequence. Many of these involved malapropisms on the part of the cast, often lampooned by Will Smith. Additionally, Smith would reference black culture in setting up mistakes made by the rest of the cast. An example of this is when Uncle Phil (James L. Avery, Sr.) comments, "Well, it's not here. It must been stolen", before realising the line was "It must have been stolen" and correcting himself. Smith appears in the shot and, in an exaggerated accent, responds, "It must bin stolen. Y'all hear dat?"

Another sitcom, Home Improvement, also showcased out-takes over its closing credits.

Star Trek: The Original Series produced many famous out-takes, which were shown to the delight of fans at gatherings over the years and have been extensively bootlegged. One famous example shows actor Leonard Nimoy, who plays the supposedly emotionless Mr. Spock, breaking into laughter when, instead of saying the line "The plants act as a repository," instead says "The plants act as a suppository". In another out-take, lead actor William Shatner breaks character during a scene and starts complaining about the food served in the studio commissary. A third example begins with a guest actress reciting the line, "We've come to the end of an eventful trip," to which Shatner replies, "I don't know what you've been taking..." -- a reference to the then-topical issue of drug-induced hallucinations or "trips". People bumping into supposedly automatic doors when the backstage personnel mistime opening them was a common accident depicted.

Lizzie McGuire, That's So Raven and other Disney Channel shows are also characterized for showing their bloopers after the shows have ended.

Many theatrical motion pictures feature bloopers during the end credits. For example, many Jackie Chan movies end with footage of failed stunts, blown dialogue, and other mishaps; Chan was inspired to do this by Burt Reynolds films of the early 1980s (in particular Smokey and the Bandit II and The Cannonball Run) that also featured end-credits bloopers. As an homage to its inspiration, the closing-credits blooper reel for Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy actually featured one outtake from Smokey and the Bandit II.

Pixar also has a tradition of including blooper-like material during the end credits of such films as Toy Story 2 and A Bug's Life; A Bug's Life, in particular, was at one point reissued to theatres with a major selling feature being the addition of extra "bloopers". Since Pixar's films are computer-animated, however, these scenes are re-enacted with faked bloopers. The makers of another computer animated film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, likewise also created a faux blooper reel showing the characters playing practical jokes and, in one case, bursting into laughter when one "sneezes" during a dramatic sequence.

Acceptance of out-takes

The proliferation of out-takes/gag reels/blooper reels, especially on recent DVD releases, has received mixed response by actors and directors. While many don't mind the extra publicity offered by such material being shown to the public and others simply enjoy seeing the mistakes, other actors complain that out-takes are demeaning to themselves and/or the craft and refuse to allow them to be made public. Such is the case with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Due to the concerns of one unidentified cast member only a few out-takes from this series have ever been officially released to the public and Paramount Pictures reportedly had a policy of destroying out-takes from the various Star Trek series for a time, although bloopers from Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise have been broadcast in recent years and the current producers seem to be more accepting towards out-takes. The 2005 DVD release of the first season of Enterprise included nine minutes of out-takes, flubs, and on-screen practical jokes, and was the first officially sanctioned Star Trek blooper reel ever released commercially by Paramount. The subsequent DVD releases of the second, third and final seasons of Enterprise also included blooper reels of varying lengths.

The only occasion to date on which Next Generation bloopers were broadcast occurred in a 1987 installment of the children's series, Reading Rainbow, which took place behind the scenes of TNG (since Rainbow was hosted by TNG co-star LeVar Burton); the episode ended with a selection of mild bloopers from an early episode. Some additional bloopers and gag footage from TNG has survived and has been circulated on the Internet.

Alternate definition

The term "blooper" is often applied to describe continuity errors and other mistakes that have escaped the notice of film editors and directors and have made it into a final, televised or released product, where these errors are subsequently identified by viewers. For example, in a film taking place in the Old West, a viewer might spot a 20th century vehicle driving in the distance of one shot, or in a film taking place in Ancient Greece, an actor may have forgotten to remove his wristwatch and it was caught on film. Strictly speaking, however, these are film errors, and not "bloopers" since they did not occur in outtake footage or live broadcast.

Note... The term 'blooper' is often mistaken for the different word and meaning 'bloomer'.