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A blooper usually refers to a faux pas made by an actor while filming a television show or movie. These bloopers, or out-takes as they are also called, are often the subject of television shows or are sometimes revealed during the closing title sequence of movies. (Jackie Chan and Burt Reynolds are both famous for including such reels with the closing credits of their movies.)
The term "blooper" was coined by TV producer Kermit Schaefer, who produced many record albums in the 1950s and 1960s collecting actual and recreated bloopers taken from radio, film and television. Besides "out-takes" or "outtakes", alternative terms used to describe this phenomenon include goof, fluff, flub, and the obsolete term, boner.
During the 1982-83 season, TV producer Dick Clark revived the bloopers concept for a series of specials on NBC. This led to a weekly series which ran from 1984 through 1988 and was followed by more specials that continue to appear on NBC irregularly in 2004, still hosted by Clark. The success of Clark's effort led to imitators on virtually all American, British and Australian TV networks, as well as scores of home video releases. With the coming of DVD in the 1990s, it is now common for major film releases to include a "blooper reel" (also known as a "gag reel" or simply "outtakes") among the bonus material on the disc.
Causes of bloopers
Bloopers are generally caused through human error. Where actors need to memorise large numbers of lines or perform a series of actions in quick succession, out-takes can be expected. Similarly, newsreaders have only a short time to deliver a large amount of information - often from foreign countries - and are prone to mispronounce place names and people's names.
Specific examples include: uncontrollable laughter, unanticipated incidents (i.e. a prop falling or breaking), forgotten lines, or deliberate sabotage of an actor's performance by a fellow actor (to evoke laughter).
The famous adage of show business, "Never work with children or animals" demonstrates two other causes of out-takes. Children, especially children who have no acting experience, often miss cues, deliver the wrong lines or make comments - often to political leaders - which are particularly embarrassing. Similarly, animals are very likely to do things not in the script.
A third type of blooper is caused by a failure of inanimate objects. This can be as simple as a sound effect being mis-timed or a microphone not working, but frequently involves doorknobs (and doors) not working or breaking, props and sets being improperly prepared, as well as props working in ways in which they should not work.
Famous bloopers
One famous out-take from Australian television is from the gameshow Who Dares Wins, hosted by former cricketer Mike Whitney. The scene involved Whitney introducing a challenge by throwing a water balloon from hand to hand and delivering the line, "Remember when we were young, when we were kids, and we'd play with water balloons? You'd throw them all over the place and they'd burst and water would go everywhere". The out-takes of this scene, aired after the credits of the show, feature Whitney delivering the line in the following ways:
- Remember when we were young, when we were kids, when we were young, when we were kids, when we were young...
- Remember when we were young, when we were kids, and we'd play with water balloons? You'd throw them all over the place and they'd burst and water would go all over the place. [Pause] That's two all over the places.
- Remember when we were young, when we were kids, and we'd play with water balloons? You'd throw them all over the place and they'd burst and water would go everywhere everywhere. [Laughter]
The American sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel Air had a tradition of airing out-takes over the credit sequence. Many of these involved malapropisms on the part of the cast, often lampooned by Will Smith. Additionally, Smith would reference black culture in sending up mistakes made by the rest of the cast. Among these out-takes are examples such as
- Uncle Phil (James Avery) comments, "Well, it's not here. It must been stolen", before realising the line was "It must have been stolen" and correcting himself. Smith appears in the shot and, in an exaggerated accent, responds, "It must bin stolen. Y'all hear dat?"
- Avery, intending to say "chandelier", refers to a character "breaking her crystal fusiliers". Jeffrey, the butler, collapses laughing, at which Avery asks, "What's a fusilier?". The response is, "You wouldn't want to break a crystal one."
- Carlton (Alphonso Ribeiro) enters a room and explains that the rest of the family "shouldn't have left [someone else] here" with an unusual stress on the word "here". Smith adopts a voice similar to that of Al Sharpton and declares "Brothers and sisters-ah, we shouldn't-a left him here-a!"
- Ribeiro, in a line later deleted from the episode, decries his school's admission of female students and describes them as "Glossing their hair, and glossing their lips, and...messing up lines." This elicits a question from Smith to the women in the audience, "Have any of y'all every glossed your hair?"
Another sitcom, Home Improvement, also showcased out-takes over its closing credits.
Star Trek: The Original Series produced many famous out-takes, which were shown to the delight of fans at gatherings over the years and have been extensively bootlegged.
Lizzie McGuire, That's So Raven and other Disney Channel shows are also characterized for showing their bloopers after the shows have ended.
Acceptance of out-takes
The proliferation of out-takes/gag reels/blooper reels, especially on recent DVD releases, has received mixed response by actors and directors. While many don't mind the extra publicity offered by such material being shown to the public and others simply enjoy seeing the mistakes, other actors complain that out-takes are demeaning to themselves and/or the craft and refuse to allow them to be made public. Such is the case with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Due to the concerns of one unidentified cast member only a few out-takes from this series have ever been officially released to the public and Paramount Pictures reportedly had a policy of destroying out-takes from the various Star Trek series for a time, although bloopers from Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise have been broadcast in recent years and the current producers seem to be more accepting towards out-takes.
Alternate definitions
The term blooper is also widely used to describe errors that appear in final broadcast/theatrical versions of film and television programs that have been missed by film editors, directors, and the actors themselves. This can include continuity errors, prop errors (for example, an actor playing a Roman soldier forgetting to remove his wristwatch), and other mistakes. There is some debate over whether these errors should be called "bloopers", with some film buffs preferring to use the term goof to refer to these errors.
The term blooper is sometimes used in the game of baseball to refer to a weakly hit ball that carries just beyond the infield, or a high pitch that is lobbed to the batter. Often it is called a "bloop hit" or simply a "bloop". Also, it can be used in any sport to refer to a particularly funny mistake or other incident (e.g., tripping over another player's shoe, attempting to slide into home plate in baseball but falling considerably short), similar to the film/television sense. This sense is often expanded to sports blooper.
Blooper is also the nickname of the M-79 grenade launcher, a weapon used extensively by American infantry forces during the Vietnam War. The Blooper served as a close support weapon bridging the gap between hand thrown grenade range and mortar fire.
External link: Blooper history and specifications (http://www.diddybop.demon.co.uk/blooper.htm)
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