Usually, when alterations are made to films for video, they have some reason that is understandable. Cuts for time, for content, to make a film more "commercial" or often just to fit in a few more commercials, are commonplace. Of course, when films are broadcast on television, they are usually hacked to pieces in order to make them "ready for prime time" (and let's not even get started on panning and scanning, the most insidious of all forms of editing.)

In the case of The World According To Garp, the new DVD features a ever-so-slight edit that most probably wouldn't even notice, which is what makes it all the more unusual and noteworthy. Roughly two-thirds of the way through the film, after the dreaded, um, "castration via car crash" scene, a line of dialogue has been trimmed. In the original theatrical cut, post-crash Roberta Muldoon (John Lithgow) is talking with Garp's mother, Jenny (Glenn Close) about the accident, and says in horror "...to have it bitten off in a Buick." (A line that never fails to get a queasy laugh.) However, in the new DVD just released by Warner, the line has been trimmed to eliminate the "...in a Buick" part. How perversly funny that the scene being castrated is about castration!

Why? Good question. Nowhere on the packaging does it indicate the film has been edited for content, nor has this author ever read anything about such an edit (any readers out there have?) So, one can only assume that in the era before rampant product placement (Garp was released in the early 80's) there were either legal fears that Buick would stir up a fuss, or Warner was actually asked to remove it or be sued. (I'm sure the association with castration wouldn't really help drive Buick's sales up, now would it?) Of course, the third possibility is simply that there was an accident during the telecine. Maybe Michael Milton is now working for WAMO, and had another unfortunate, uh, accident? Hmmm....