Ms. Doubtfire’s call for “NC-17 cut” was issued

Okay, so here’s the story: in 2015, Cristóvão Colombo, director of downright insane Robin Williams comedy Mrs. Doubtfire, gave an interview to Yahoo Movies in which he claimed that, due to Williams’ well-known tendency towards out-of-the-way improvisations, he managed to put together four complete cuts of the 1993 comedy at that time, of an increasingly vulgar vintage. Columbus, possibly recklessly, dubbed these cuts (which, as far as we know, have never been shown to the MPAA), in terms of standard film ratings: “A version of the film with PG-13, R and NC-17 ratings.” (Mrs. Doubtfire was finally released as a PG-13 film.) The interview itself is no longer online, but there is no indication that Columbus has ever done anything with these cuts, or whether – in the days when films were shot on real film – they even physically existed. (As opposed to, say, being mounted on his head with the material he knew he had at hand.) But he said that, and so are the seeds of desire planted.

Cut to today, when – encouraged by his successful efforts to force a multinational corporation to release the Snyder cut of Justice League“The Internet has started looking, wondering what other demands it can be met.” Several people on Twitter discovered the old Columbus statements and therefore the call for “the NC-17 cut” Mrs. Doubtfire now it has been issued ahead.

As noted by Snopeshowever, it is extremely it’s not clear whether this fabulous artifact really exists, or whether it –like Snyder Cut, now that we think about it– needs to be properly assembled with a bunch of old parts and a large stock of money from someone else. Certainly, Mrs. Doubtfire the star Mara Wilson said (in 2016) that she had never heard of an NC-17 version (although she noted that she would not be surprised if a censored edition had been made once, given Williams’ love for improvisation.) And even though the film by screenwriter Randi Mayem Singer replied today with happy memories of the film’s “dirty diaries”, she could not confirm whether the actual cut in question was actually made. So certainly sounds as if there was probably no real NC-17 edition of the film, just as there are a lot of very blue outtakes that may still exist, just waiting to spoil a new Blu-ray release.

In the meantime, there’s another question here, namely: Is it really, uh, would you like listening to Robin Williams making material classified as NC-17 – which, by the definitions of the time, would have to be explicitly sexual – in a film in which he is dressed as a woman to be able to deceive his ex-wife to let you go back to your life? Williams was one of the talented improvisers in comedy, but also one of the most decidedly unfiltered; hearing their attitudes (and the attitudes of the time) towards sex (and, just as a hunch, transgender people) being thrown like a hand grenade in a beloved classic would probably be a lot less fun than it looks in the initial blush.

Still: the internet demanded it. God only knows what happens next.