We NEED The 3+ Hours, Original Version Of Step Brothers

AV Club - There’s a fun oral history of modern comedy classic Step Brothers over at The Ringer today, and in the piece director Adam McKay reveals that early drafts of his and Will Ferrell’s screenplay came in at nearly 200 pages.

“You obviously can’t turn in a nearly 200-page script,” McKay says. “So we had to seriously chop it down. But there are so many 20-, 30-page runs in the script that had to be cut out.”

In film production, a general rule of thumb stipulates that one page of script equates to roughly one minute of screen-time. So, in this instance, McKay and Ferrell wrote a script for what would theoretically be a three-and-a-third-hours-long version of Step Brothers. While making a comedy anywhere in the ballpark of three hours is probably a bad idea (looking at you, Funny People), some of the cut material, as described by McKay, sounds pretty fun.

Of course, beyond the script itself much of the film’s best moments are improvised, and editor Brent White notes that McKay still ended up shooting enough material to put together at least a four-hour cut of the film. That’s almost certainly too much Step Brothers, but it’s hard not to wonder what got cut—both in the editing bay and in the writing room.

————-

Do we need a 3+ hour version of Step Brothers?

Now, don’t get me wrong, Step Brothers is as close to a perfect comedy as you can make. Every single line in it is laugh out loud funny, it’s almost impossible to go 20 seconds without a belly laugh. There doesn’t need to be a sequel to it, because much like every other comedy sequel ever made, nothing will match the original. I can watch Step Brothers every Sunday until the sun explodes and we all die and never get tired of it. Same with Wedding Crashers, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Superbad. Just the fearsome foursome of rewatchable comedies that will never ever get old.

Now that being said, if the original Step Brothers script clocked in at 3+ hours, I want to see all 3+ hours of it. There’s no need to keep that from the public. In these trying times (have you seen Bitcoin recently?), the world needs more Step Brothers. Adam McKay said they shot over 4 hours and cut it down to 98 minutes. That seems like the most impossible task of all time. How do you cut 3 hours of Will Ferrell and John C Reily improvising, trying to make each other laugh? Imagine the gems we might never see. The laughs we might never have. It makes me upset to even think about.

Maybe it’s for the best though. As I said before, Step Brothers is a perfect comedy. They cut it correctly. But I’m a dreamer. I will always be left wondering what else is out there. McKay did disclose this part of the script that was clipped:

There was one run we had where Dale and Brennan’s dysfunction got to such a point. … It was in the middle of the night and somehow it’s mentioned that Dr. [Robert] Doback [Dale’s physician father, played by Richard Jenkins] keeps a pistol in his safe. Dale and Brennan are in bed, and Dale is scaring Brennan. And he was doing that thing where you get all wound up at night, listening to sounds, and Dale is scaring him. And then Dale starts to get scared, and they both get really freaked out and they convince themselves that there’s an intruder downstairs. And they shake Richard Jenkins and Mary Steenburgen awake, like, “There’s an intruder in the house, and he’s armed.” And so Dr. Doback goes for the gun in the safe and Dale and Brennan light off Roman candles in the house and Dr. Doback fires a round off in the chaos. Then the police are there and they say, “There’s no one here. There’s nothing going on.” And then Dr. Doback says, “This is so fucked up. This is so unhealthy. You guys have to get out of here.” And then basically Dale and Brennan are like, “Can’t we just go to SeaWorld?”

That’s somehow the answer: “Can we not be so angry? Why is everyone so angry? Why can’t we just go and have a nice time at SeaWorld?” And Mary kind of acquiesces. And then it’s this giant trip to SeaWorld. It’s the greatest day ever.

Fuck it. Do the sequel. “Dale and Brennan Go To Sea World”. I’m in.