Sweet Nothings: The Lost Words of Lost In Translation, Translated

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

YouTube? Rules.

I know: not exactly news. But I am nevertheless continually astonished by the lost treasures I stumble across there in the digital equivalent of that infinite warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark (and, apparently, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).

Recently, I blogged about the amazing (to me, anyway) discovery of the lost Biggs scenes from Star Wars. And today, while searching for clips for an upcoming post, I suddenly stumbled across an audio-enhanced reworking of the penultimate scene from Lost In Translation, where Bill Murray whispers something mysterious and romantic in Scarlett Johansson’s ear, something that we the audience never got to hear...

...until now.

Now, as the wise YouTube poster vid22dotcom cautions, “If you REALLY don't want to KNOW. PLEASE SKIP THIS VIDEO.” If you think it’s more satisfying NOT knowing what BiMu says to ScarJo (in the same way it was 1000 times more satisfying NOT knowing that the interior of the Mothership in Close Encounters just looked like a bunch of cheesy “Special Edition” effects), then DON'T click on the video clip below.

But you know you wanna click it, right?

Biggs News To Me

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:00:00 GMT

As geeks go, I’m more Reform than Orthodox, so I’m guessing the majority of readers who know or care about Luke Skywalker’s doomed pal Biggs Darklighter already know everything there is to know about the long-lost Star Wars scenes I’ve only just rediscovered, but for my fellow slacker nerds and you casual fans out there in blogland who HAVEN'T already experienced the aforementioned scenes a dozen times on bootleg VHS cassettes, first edition laser discs, at George Lucas' house, etcetera...

...okay, so, remember the end of Star Wars (and no, I’m NOT going to call it Episode 4: A New Hope, thank you very much). Remember the rebel in the cheesy moustache who dies (along with Porkins and the rest) while trying to blow up the Death Star? And remember how Luke looks all sad about the dude's demise for a second or two?

Well, as you may remember from the screenplay or the novelization or the Marvel comics adaptation, that guy in the moustache was Biggs, Luke’s older, cooler friend from Tatooine who ran off and joined the Rebel Alliance while Luke was stuck farming moisture for his Uncle. (Hence the cryptic line early in the movie when Luke says, “Oh, Biggs is right, I'm never gonna get out of here."

Now, back in the day, I was more obsessed with Star Wars than all my future obsessions with sex, drugs and rock & roll combined...I knew Yoda was originally supposed to be a little purple elf on Luke’s shoulder, I knew the TIE in TIE fighter meant “Twin-Ion-Engined,” I even suffered through the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.

But until just a few weeks ago, I'd never heard or even suspected that the following Luke/Biggs scenes had ever left the script stage...and thank God George Lucas left them out. Just as the extra footage in Apocalypse Now Redux showed the thin line between art and crap (goofy hijinx with the Playboy bunnies? The horror! The horror!), I think you’ll agree that the following scenes, while interesting from a completist’s perspective, clearly demonstrate the thin line between “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” and the worst of ‘70s sci-fi cheese.

LUKE'S ORIGINAL INTRO

LUKE & THE ANCHORHEAD GANG

LUKE & BIGGS

The Screengrab : Biggs

Sweet Nothings: The Lost Words of Lost In Translation, Translated

Biggs News To Me