The Unofficial Shawnee Smith Information Site -- Who's Harry Crumb? Editing Notes

"Who’s Harry Crumb?" Broadcast Version editing notes

When Who’s Harry Crumb? was shown on NBC in 1993, the film contained additional footage not found on the Columbia/TriStar Home Video VHS/DVD release. This 94-minute broadcast version has been shown on Encore, however most pay-TV screenings that this author has seen, including HBO & Cinemax, show the 90-minute PG13-rated version.

Most film reference sources, including "The International Motion Picture Almanac", "Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide" and the imdb, list this film with a running time of 98 minutes, yet the PG-13 version runs 90 minutes. With the cuts made to the broadcast version reinstated, plus the additional footage, the total running time would be maybe 96mins.

The film color of the 94-minute version is slightly dull. As with U.S. network movie broadcasts, all profanity has been redubbed to be less severe including, among others:

	In the scene where Nicki Downing (Shawnee Smith) mixes the health shake for Crumb (John Candy), her reference to Helen being a nymphomaniac ("She’s gotta have it two or three times a day") is gone.
	Nicki’s famous line at the end of the car crash with Crumb has been changed from "Holy shit that was dangerous!" to "Holy smokes that was dangerous!" It doesn’t even sound like her voice was used to redub the dialogue.
	The airline pilot’s line: "What the f**k!" has been changed to a more audience-friendly: "What the hell!"

There are some timing cuts made to the broadcast version including: a few seconds of the build-up of the stalker kidnapping Jennifer and the end of the scene on the bus with Jim Belushi.

The additional footage consists of one scene extension, one entire 4-minute scene and some minor additional footage of Crumb at the hair salon.

21 minutes into the film, after Nicki meets Crumb, there is additional dialogue from Nicki after she says "Hey Tim!" Her dialogue explains that Tim is her second cousin and her dad felt sorry for him so he made him the butler. The butler lazily shows Crumb upstairs to Nicki’s father. In the 90-minute PG13-rated version, Nicki’s line has been dubbed with: "Hey dad!" and there is a cut to the next scene where Crumb meets Nicki’s father. This scene adds about 30 seconds to the film.

Screengrabs below illustrate this scene.

33 minutes into the film there is an additional scene after the one between Helen Downing (Annie Potts) and Elliot Drasen (Jeff Jones). Crumb follows Helen down to the wine cellar (she has a glass of wine in her left hand and a cigarette in her right). In the next shot the wine glass has switched to her right hand and she does not hold a cigarette at all. In the wine cellar, Crumb toys with a shotgun pigeon machine. There is dialogue between Helen and Crumb, with Helen leaving at the end. Crumb is left alone in the wine cellar where he pops the cork off a wine bottle, which then hits the pigeon machine, causing pigeons to shoot around the cellar destroying the entire stock of wine bottles. The scene ends with Crumb standing ankle-deep in red wine saying: "Wine – that’s gonna stain."

This explains the wine stains on Crumb's ankles in the dinner scene where he plays "footsy" under the table with Helen/Elliot. Without this scene, keen-eyed viewers are confused about how the wine stains got there! This scene adds 4 minutes to the film.

Screengrabs below illustrate this scene.

At the end of the dinner scene, Crumb follows Helen downstairs again. The footage appears to be the same exact "take" as when he followed her before. This time he smashes something off-camera ("Hope that wasn’t as expensive as it looked -- sorry.") and visits Nicki in Jennifer’s room.

Screengrabs below illustrate this scene.

I became aware that this film was in production when I read a short item in the Los Angeles Times L.A. Life Section on 15 July 1988.

From the article it would appear that the film was shot in Vancouver British Columbia during July and August 1988. Comedy pictures typically take 60 days or so to film.

An Entertainment Tonight segment from November 1988 showed behind the scenes footage of Annie Potts and Tim Matheson searching for the ransom money, landing in a dumpster; no other cast members are seen. At the end of the segment, the host stated that Who's Harry Crumb? would hit theatres on December 6th. This was the same Friday that The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! was released. I even marked my calendar with this information. Unfortunately, I no longer have the tape with this Entertainment Tonight segment.

6 December 1988 arrived and I saw The Naked Gun however Crumb was nowhere to be found. This author believes 'Crumb' was reedited slightly at this point, perhaps because test audiences responded negatively to the film. The film was held back until 3 February 1989. January to April is an off peak movie season when movie studios often release films that performed poorly with test audiences.

This author has examined a script for 'Crumb' dated 3/3/88. The script is virtually identical to the film with the third act being markedly different. The scenes with additional footage listed above are found in the script.

Questions should be directed to williamlonergan@yahoo.com

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Last modified: 08 September 2010