Ramblings

No, calm down. What’s your favourite line from Notting Hill? Perhaps this, delivered by Julia Roberts’ character, Anna Scott:

“I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”

But what about this zinger from Rhys Ifans as Spike:

“You daft prick!”

Having been a figure of fun, and been described as a “masturbating Welshman” by Hugh Grant’s Will Thacker – would writer Richard Curtis have characterised a Scottish or Irish part that way? – Spike now emerges as the only person to tell Will the truth: he was crazy to turn down Anna Scott.

So when the film came on yet again, we settled down for some familiar comfort viewing, anticipating our best loved moments. Except one of them didn’t arrive. The scene where Will’s friends half-heartedly endorse his decision came and went without Spike’s pivotal line. We stared at each other. Had we imagined it? And later, in the scene where Will has infiltrated himself into Anna’s press conference at the Savoy Hotel, his line referencing Spike’s comment

“What if, uh, Mr. Thacker realized that he had been a daft prick and got down on his knees and begged you to reconsider if you would… indeed… reconsider?”

has also disappeared. We were starting to doubt ourselves. Did I imagine it? And is this what I imagine, when I imagine? Some research was required. My first internet enquiry produced a Google AI Overview response telling me that the line did not appear in the film, although many people thought that it did.

What? Now Google is trying to gaslight me? The first clip I found seemed to support them:

https://youtu.be/-ggw3KHN7Lk?si=3lU–b52G3JJk2eu

We still get Spike’s “I told you so” nod before the party makes their zany dash to the Savoy. But the crucial line is gone, and we’re not having that. So I kept on searching and found this:

https://youtu.be/p8UWtbF_Rmg?si=PGjp4z8Ca84TOdRK

There you go! Spike’s “prick” is there, in all its glory. Phew, I didn’t imagine it. So what had we been watching? Networks routinely edit films to comply with watershed restrictions. Who knew? Many people, I suppose, but not I.

And at the end of the 1990s, companies began selling copies of movies with violent or sexual content and foul language edited out, looking to sell them to family audiences. By 2003 they had been closed down by the major American film studios for copyright infringement.

A company called ClearPlay has avoided this restriction by offering filtering software enabling the user to remove any scenes they might find questionable. This service is still on offer.

Meanwhile a Family Friendly Version of Notting Hill was released on DVD, by Universal.

If you should want this bowdlerised version, you’ll have to look on eBay – it seems Amazon doesn’t stock in any more. Not much demand, apparently.