DVD Extras We Really Need

A couple of weeks ago it was my dad’s birthday and one of the gifts I gave to him was the DVD of Dead Heat, a fairly terrible movie starring Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams as cops, one of whom is dead. The tagline for the film is “You can’t keep a good cop dead.” Why did I buy this DVD? Well, I like to give people awful movies, it’s one of the unique qualities about me that makes me so endearing (is it endearing or annoying, I can never remember which). The Dead Heat DVD features commentary from director, producers and writer. When I was telling a friend this we both commented on how we’d rather hear Joe Piscopo doing a running commentary during the movie. We then started brainstorming about other movies that need better commentary features and my friend commented that I should do a blog post about it. Well, here it is; four DVDs and the official Adam’s World improvements that need to be made to them.

South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut - Sure, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are hilarious, but wouldn’t this DVD be even better if the kids were doing the commentary? It could start with all of them wondering when the heck they were filmed (“Dude, someone was filming us? Not cool”) and why they keep breaking into song (“Ha ha, you’re singing! That’s so gay. Wait, now I’m singing. God damnit!”). Cartman could then attempt to get rid of all the other kids so he could have the commentary all to himself. At some point Kenny would be stuck doing the commentary on his own, giving everyone a good 5-10 minutes of nothing but sentences so muffled nobody can understand them. C’mon Trey and Matt, you know you want to make this happen!

CB4 – CB4 is a movie that has never received the special treatment it’s deserved. A straight up comedy classic that, as Charlie Murphy noted to me when I spoke with him about it, predicted the now commonplace acts of rappers taking the names of gangsters and gangsters running record companies. With that in mind I’d love to see a special edition DVD of CB4 with commentary from the gangsta rappers and label owners of that era and today. I think it would be interesting to hear their take on the comedy of the film since some of them have, in fact, made themselves the butt of the jokes, whether they realize it or not. Can Irv Gotti really laugh at someone taking the name of a gangster in order to appear to be harder than he really is? And c’mon, you know you want to hear Freedom Williams’ thoughts on Wacky D!

Pootie Tang – Another Chris Rock classic, Pootie Tang is the ultimate “turn on your DVD player and turn off your brain” comedy (some of us enjoyed it so much we want a second one!). It’s seriously hilarious as long as you aren’t hung up on being serious. The Pootie Tang DVD, however, much like CB4, has never been given any special treatment (at some point one has to wonder what the movie companies have against Chris Rock!). I have the cure for this, however; put out a version of Pootie Tang that includes commentary from Pootie himself! The Pootie commentary would be nonsensical and hilarious. He’d explain what’s going on in the film and listeners would have no idea what he’s saying. I’m not sure how many folks could take it for the full 90 minutes, but I know I’d love it. Plus, could you imagine getting high and turning something like that on? WOW!

The Natural – Some people call The Natural a classic. I consider it the most flawed baseball movie of all time thanks to Hollywood feeling audiences wouldn’t like the real ending of the story so they changed it to make Roy Hobbs a hero rather than a man who cut a deal to throw the big game. There is one way that I feel this movie could be made watchable, though, and quite possibly completely unintelligible at the same time, and that’s to have Yogi Berra doing the commentary for the DVD. Could you just imagine over two hours of Yogi-isms and nonsensical stories about baseball with The Natural as the backdrop? What would he say about Wonderboy and how long would it take him to say it? Yogi on commentary would be amazing and almost make up for the screwed up ending they put on the film.

So there you have it. Four commentary features that simply have to happen. Are you listening Hollywood? Don’t make me come out there. I'll take over!