One story that has gotten many through the awful year that has been this week (it feels like a year) has been the whole ‘butthole saga’ in relation to Universal Pictures’ film adaptation of the musical “Cats”.
It began when Ben Mekler, a friend of a producer on the film, revealed that the film’s VFX artists inserted and then had to remove hundreds of shots of computer-generated anuses from the film. Later it was clarified it wasn’t buttholes by design, but rather the CG fur simulations were “groomed or just folded in a way that really REALLY looked like very furry lady genitals and buttholes by accident”.
So the VFX crew had to paint out the offending articles. Universal neither confirmed or denied the report, telling Vanity Fair they would like to preserve the “magic and mythical nature” of the film.
Now the saga has taken a turn into an even stranger direction. Mekler scored more information on Twitter, his source saying not only were some shadows reduced around the cats crotches to make them less noticeable but there was one other key shot:
“There was a shot which had one of the cats peeing, like literally peeing. Cat is facing towards screen, you can see everything. That shot was client final, however when I saw in the theatre, seemed like they took off the pee effect.”
Mekler later updated the story citing multiple sources saying the scene in question is ‘The Old Gumbie Cat’ song with Rebel Wilson’s Jennyanydots and the moment is when “she goes over the sink” and stops a bit whilst facing the screen – that’s when the peeing took place.
While it’s unlikely #ReleaseThePeeCut will trend the way #ReleaseTheButtholeCut did, the sequence in question is already infamous anyway for its incredibly disturbing cockroach tap-dancing kickline. It also adds to the sheer insanity that was the movie which is available on Digital HD today, and Blu-ray and DVD starting April 7th.
