Whether the bloopers are from British texts or from texts that are old enough just to seem British, these are the best of all time.
7. Wuthering Heights. In the iconic final scene, the narrator, Mr. Lockwood, visits the grave site of his landlord, Heathcliff, who has died after wandering all night in a tortured state over the loss of Catherine. Some villagers whisper that his ghost still walks the wild moors. Check out Lockwood’s priceless reaction when Heathcliff—a notorious prankster—sneaks up from the moors totally undead. If you look closely, he snatches some moths from the air with his teeth. Brontë considered keeping this take but ultimately decided that closure was for commoners.
6. A Tale of Two Cities. Inspired by his unrequited love for Lucie Darnay, the cynical and depressed Sydney Carton switches places with her husband, Charles, hours before he is to be executed. Dickens ends the story with the farewell speech Carton would have given, if alive. The speech took 267 takes. That might seem like a lot, but it’s pretty good for someone who delivers a speech after he’s been guillotined. Plus, the story’s most iconic line exists only because the word “sacrifice” was too much for Carton’s severed motor cortex.
5. The Metamorphosis. At the end, Gregor is supposed to lie down on the floor and expire gently for no clear reason. But as we all know, real roaches never die so easily—they can survive without a head for up to one week. Every time Kafka’s roach had to perform the unrealistic scene, it registered its feelings by theatrically spreading salmonella with its feces—which was funny to watch but did delay production by many months and kill a few interns.
4. Anne of Green Gables. Living as an orphan for eleven years famously caused tension on set, not least because of Anne’s attachment disorder and habit of drinking eighty-proof corn whiskey. Behold her “charmed” guardian Matthew Cuthbert as he tries not to react to her potent breath and rage.
3. The Yellow Wallpaper. After her husband, who’s also her doctor, confines her to an upstairs room, she descends into madness. Who can forget that scene when she bites and tears off the wallpaper? But when her husband faints from shock, she’s just supposed to “creep” over his body and pace around the room. Instead, she executes a diving double-elbow drop on her husband’s sternum twenty-seven times, which didn’t make the final cut.
2. Old Man and the Sea. Sometimes things go too smoothly, like when Santiago reeled the marlin into his boat on the first try, inadvertently emasculating Hemingway. Hemingway then took Santiago out to open waters, and they disappeared for days, going mano a mano. When production resumed, the protagonist was so weak and dehydrated that he appeared much older than his actual age of forty-three.
1. The Odyssey. Penelope and Odysseus couldn’t stop making each other laugh during the slaying of the suitors in Books 21–24. It required thirty-three grueling takes over six days to slaughter all 108 suitors—sad, when the original plan was to slaughter just four.
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