Astonishing literary discovery of the week: in the US version of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day it referred to Australia, not Timbuktu.
Categories
Astonishing literary discovery of the week
Astonishing literary discovery of the week: in the US version of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day it referred to Australia, not Timbuktu.
6 replies on “Astonishing literary discovery of the week”
Didn’t the yannks refer to the first Harry Potter story as the wizards stone or something because no one understood what a philosopher was or something as well?
Gawd, remind me not to comment in blogs while on the phone.
My favoutite apocrophal story is that the movie “The Madness of King George” had originally been going to have the three in roman numerals after it, but the idea was dropped as they thought yanks would be wondering how they missed parts I and II.
Have a feeling that’s just urban legend, but it’s a nice one.
King George gets a thumbs down from Snopes.
It is true though that the Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone book and film were renamed to Sorcerer’s for their USA release, including the cast re-filming some scenes which referred to the stone. The Philosopher’s Stone is/was a “real” (or at least mythical) stone that could delay death.
Wikipedia notes that the book/movie name change was ostensibly because the publishers were concerned that the title would not instantly give the book an impression of magic and fantasy to the American public.
I had a similar literary shock re the HHGTTG trilogy. Cant remember which book but when Arthur and co join the flying building party they meet a guy who had received an award for ‘the most gratuitous use of the word ‘f*ck’…… However, in the American version, it was an award for ‘the most gratuitous use of the word ‘Belgium’. Just doesn’t have the same ring….
I remember reading somewhere that years ago the Yanks decided to do a version of that classic Brit comedy Fawlty Towers, but decided that the Basil Fawlty character wasn’t necessary in their version. :-)
The only good thing about all the US ‘comedy’ (IMO synonymous with ‘crap’) that’s on is that it gives me so much free time to do other things… :-)