To say that Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t like Bobcat Goldthwait would be a huge understatement. Goldthwait evidently first raised Seinfeld’s ire in April 1994, when he appeared on one of the final episodes of The Arsenio Hall Show. For whatever reason, Goldthwait decided to do some Seinfeld bashing during that interview, despite Hall attempting to deter him.

“He’s a spooky, weird Scientologist guy banging teenage girls,” Goldthwait told Hall.

For context, Seinfeld once studied Scientology and was allegedly dating a woman at the time who was 17 years old when he’d initially met her. Goldthwait assumed that Seinfeld had taken the jokes in stride because he was friendly with Seinfeld’s manager, but years later, Seinfeld made it clear on an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee that he was no fan of Goldthwait’s.

While interviewing Bridget Everett in 2019, Goldthwait (whose name was censored) came up, and Seinfeld wasn’t shy about sharing his thoughts on his fellow comic. “I don’t like him at all. At all,” Seinfeld said bluntly.

Jerry Seinfeld Still Really Hates Bobcat Goldthwait

The mere mention of Goldthwait’s name got Seinfeld so riled up that he even started cursing, which is a rare occurrence for the usually clean-cut comedian. “He used to rail against comedians ‘cause they weren’t as wild and dangerous as he was. ‘Cause he sucked, OK? He wasn’t funny. And that’s why he didn’t get anywhere,” Seinfeld explained.

“‘Cause in comedy, nobody gives a f—k if you’re cool, if you’re lame. If you’re funny, you win,” he continued. “And he’s not funny. That’s why he had to do that stupid f—king voice. ‘Cause you have no f—king act.”

Goldthwait addressed Seinfeld’s comments while speaking with The Guardian in 2021, telling them, “He’s a sore winner. I felt like I was in a scene in a Western, where the gunslinger has put down his pistols, but then Seinfeld rolls into town, and he’s got to take his Colt 45 off the wall for one last showdown.” A couple years after that, Goldthwait jokingly offered Seinfeld an olive branch, saying that he was available for Bee Movie 2, but something tells us the pair won’t be patching things up any time soon.

The post The Bobcat Goldthwait Joke That (Allegedly) Made Jerry Seinfeld Hate Him Forever appeared first on VICE.

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When you think about who could’ve pulled off playing John McClane in 1988’s Die Hard other than Bruce Willis, what kind of names pop into your head? Action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, and Harrison Ford probably spring to mind, no? It should come as no surprise, then, that every single one of those actors was offered Willis’s role at some point. You know what is surprising, though? The first person the filmmakers reached out to about starring in the movie was Frank Sinatra.

Here’s how that ended up happening: Die Hard, as it turns out, is actually based on the 1979 Roderick Thorp novel Nothing Lasts Forever. The story revolves around retired NYPD detective Joseph Leland, who heads to Los Angeles to visit his estranged daughter, Stephanie Gennaro. Stephanie works inside a 40-story skyscraper, where her company is throwing its annual Christmas party.

While Leland waits for the party to end, a group of terrorists take the guests hostage, forcing Leland to spring into action.

‘Die Hard’ Had to Offer John McClane to Frank Sinatra First

But Nothing Lasts Forever wasn’t the first book to feature Leland. The ex-cop made his literary debut in Thorp’s 1966 novel The Detective. Two years later, The Detective was adapted into a film in which Leland was portrayed by none other than Frank Sinatra. Though the movie did well both critically and commercially, the idea of a sequel didn’t come about until after Thorp wrote Nothing Lasts Forever.

However, the folks at 20th Century Fox were evidently pleased enough with The Detective that they purchased the rights to a follow-up long before one had even been written. Because of that, the studio was contractually obligated to offer Sinatra the lead role in Die Hard. To clarify how ridiculous it would’ve been for Sinatra to entertain the possibility of taking the job, the singer was 77 years old by the time Die Hard was released. Sinatra wisely declined the proposal.

The post Before Bruce Willis, ‘Die Hard’ Was Offered to a Legendary Singer for a Weird Reason appeared first on VICE.

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The 2005 Rob Schneider comedy Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo could never accurately be referred to as a critically acclaimed movie. In a front-page article featured in the Los Angeles Times, film critic Patrick Goldstein chastised Hollywood studios for bankrolling sequels like European Gigolo and referred to Schneider as a “third-rate comic.” Schneider wasn’t happy about this, and took out full-page ads in Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter attacking Goldstein and questioning his credentials. In particular, Schneider pointed out that Goldstein had never won any awards for his journalism.

Schneider also suggested that Goldstein hadn’t won a Pulitzer Prize because “they haven’t invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny, Pompous Reporter.” “I can honestly say that if I sat with your colleagues at a luncheon, afterwards they’d say, ‘You know, that Rob Schneider is a pretty intelligent guy,’ whereas, if you sat with my colleagues, after lunch, you would just be beaten beyond recognition,” Schneider continued.

The Legendary Roger Ebert Review That Absolutely Torched Rob Schneider

Though he was a little late to the party, Pulitzer-winning critic Roger Ebert chimed in on the controversy in August of that year. “Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain,” Ebert wrote. “As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.”

Two years later, Ebert would release a book called Your Movie Sucks, which compiled some of his most scathing film reviews—including his zero-star review of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. Despite that, Ebert and Schneider made amends following Ebert’s thyroid cancer surgery in 2012.

On his website, Ebert revealed that Schneider sent him a bouquet of flowers and wished him a speedy recovery, signing his note, “Your Least Favorite Movie Star, Rob Schneider.” Of the flowers, Ebert said, “They were a reminder, if I needed one, that although Rob Schneider might (in my opinion) have made a bad movie, he is not a bad man, and no doubt tried to make a wonderful movie, and hopes to again. I hope so, too.”

The post 21 Years Ago, Roger Ebert Hated This Rob Schneider Movie So Much He Gave It Zero Stars appeared first on VICE.

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In the Season 1 Game of Thrones episode “Fire and Blood,” King Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) gruesomely forces Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) to look at her dead father’s decapitated head, which he has propped up on a spike. Joffrey then points out the heads of her dad’s household staff, who’ve suffered the same fate. However, if you pay close attention to one of the spiked noggins in question, it bears a slight resemblance to a former U.S. president.

You can check out the shot for yourself right here:

In the DVD commentary for the episode, series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss revealed that the head all the way on the left was modeled after George W. Bush. And before you jump to any conclusions, they were quick to point out that this wasn’t a political statement. On the contrary, they simply had to use whatever props they had lying around, and for whatever reason, Bush’s head was available to them. This would appear to be backed up by the fact that the head is facing away from the camera and has long hair, unlike Bush himself.

‘Game of Thrones’ Once Put George W. Bush’s Head on a Spike

But despite the reasonable explanation for the head’s inclusion, people were outraged once word of it hit the internet. This prompted an apology from HBO, in which they said that they were “deeply dismayed” by the situation and found it “unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste.” The network also made their feelings clear to the show’s producers, who apologized for what they called a “careless mistake.”

Furthermore, it was announced that the footage would be removed from future home video releases.

Benioff and Weiss issued a statement of their own as well, clarifying that they’d used a lot of prosthetic body parts on Game of Thrones, but couldn’t afford to have them all made from scratch. For that reason, they had to resort to renting them in bulk. “In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former president and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise,” they wrote in conclusion.

You can listen to George R.R. Martin recount the story to Stephen King in the video below.

The post 15 Years Ago, a ‘Game of Thrones’ Episode Featured the Decapitated Head of a Former U.S. President appeared first on VICE.

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One of the most persistent urban legends in Hollywood history revolves around a munchkin hanging himself during a scene from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. As the story goes, the actor in question was driven to suicide by his unrequited love for a fellow little person. This was said to have been captured on film as Dorothy skips down the yellow brick road with the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, singing “We’re Off to See the Wizard.”

Take a look at the sequence below, and keep your eyes on the trees in the background.

Did you catch that movement in the center there? Well, as it turns out, that’s what people have been claiming is a dangling munchkin corpse for decades now. But what do the experts have to say on the matter, you ask? For starters, historian John Fricke, who wrote The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History, told People in 2024 that there’s no dead munchkin in the movie.

“This is the kind of stuff that gets perpetuated,” says Fricke. “We’re living at a time when anything is believable.”

The Truth Behind the Infamous ‘Wizard of Oz’ Hanging Munchkin Myth

However, Fricke is far from the only person to have dismissed the longstanding rumor. In fact, Snopes debunked this whole thing way back in 1997. According to them, what you see in that shot isn’t a person at all, but a bird (believed to be a crane) that was borrowed from the Los Angeles Zoo to give the indoor set more of an outdoors feel. What may have looked like a body swaying back and forth in the grainy days of VHS was, in fact, just a large bird flapping its wings.

Furthermore, the timeline of this alleged suicide doesn’t make sense at all. You see, the Munchkinland scenes in the film were actually shot after the forest scenes, meaning none of the munchkin actors would’ve been hanging around (one way or another) at that point. It also defies logic that not a single one of the many people involved with the movie would’ve caught this while it was happening. Oh, and as for the idea that the studio edited the “real” hanging out of later home video releases, that’s been discredited as well; case in point, this recording from a 1980 TV broadcast that predates the earliest VHS release:

The post Did One of the Munchkins Hang Himself on the Set of ‘The Wizard of Oz’? appeared first on VICE.

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In April 2006, South Park dedicated an hour’s worth of screen time to bashing Family Guy with their special two-part “Cartoon Wars” saga. The big reveal during the second episode was that Family Guy’s popular cutaway gags were constructed by manatees. As Cartman learns while visiting Fox Studios, the creatures come up with jokes for the show by selecting random “idea balls” that have different subjects written on them.

You can take a look at the scene in question right here:

Naturally, Family Guy fans were eagerly anticipating what series creator Seth MacFarlane would do in response. At the following year’s Comic-Con, MacFarlane was asked about South Park’s criticism, but didn’t react in the way many had been hoping he would. “We were actually overjoyed that they spent two half-hours of their airtime talking about us. I don’t have that kind of time,” MacFarlane explained.

“It really does come down to that,” he continued. “We would have to either do the greatest joke in the world that was really quick or do three episodes about South Park.”

‘Family Guy’ Cut Its Planned Response to ‘South Park’s Brutal Manatee Joke

MacFarlane went on to say that he didn’t know how to respond to the attacks and that it was probably best to leave it alone. He did reveal that there was one joke he considered doing to get even with South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, though. However, at the end of the day, the Family Guy staff decided that it would’ve been too much of a low blow. When the Comic-Con crowd booed MacFarlane for taking the high road, he pushed back by suggesting that he’d get the same reaction regardless of the choice he made.

Luckily, for those who are curious about the deleted gag MacFarlane was referring to, it did end up surfacing eventually. The joke was originally part of a scene from the 2008 episode “McStroke,” in which Stewie, disguised as an older boy, takes his date to a place called Anal Point, where people go to have sex.

As initially conceived, a guy in the car next to theirs can be heard yelling, “Ow, Trey!” to which another man replies, “C’mon, Matt, just relax and let it happen!” Check it out for yourself below.

The post WATCH: The ‘Family Guy’ Joke Seth MacFarlane Decided Was Too Much appeared first on VICE.

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