Cats flopped hard when it was released because it was, well, awful. However, the film is already onto the second of its nine lives as it’s quickly developing a cult following of the “so bad it’s good” variety. Whereas Cats’ first life was filled with criticism, its second life is far more interesting as not only did it result in Seth Rogen enlightening us with his stoned thoughts on the film after watching it while high, there are now calls to release the *checks notes*, uh, Butthole Cut of the film.
Now would be a good time to watch ‘Cats’ (the non-butthole cut sadly) since we’re all in quarantine, which the GOAT team talk about on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
It all began with a Twitter thread from writer/director/producer Ben Mekler about the making of Cats, which was pretty tame until someone revealed that they (allegedly) know of a friend of a friend whose job was to remove all the CGI buttholes in the film prior to its release. They then insinuated that this must mean that a Butthole Cut of Cats has to exist out there somewhere.
Comic book fans and puffy-chested bros can have their dumb Snyder Cut, we want the Butthole Cut of Cats.
Needless to say that everyone immediately became interested in this mythical Cats Butthole Cut (especially the GOAT team) and #ReleaseTheButtholeCut quickly became a legit thing on Twitter, which was soon championed by the likes of Rian Johnson and Seth Rogen (unsurprisingly).
But just as the Cats Butthole Cut movement began to snowball in momentum, the whole #ReleaseTheButtholeCut thing got another twist that upped the stakes considerably.
Apparently a VFX crewmember (who wished to remain anonymous) contacted Mekler and revealed that there were never any shots of cats with buttholes in the film. Or at least “by design.”
Furthermore, the VFX crewmember said they saw a bunch of shots in Cats where “the skin and fur sim was groomed or just folded in a way that really REALLY looked like very furry lady genitals and buttholes by accident” and their job was to painstakingly paint these out while awkwardly asking “does that look like a fanny to you?” every day.
So in other words, the Butthole Cut may not technically exist, but there’s likely a cut of the film that contains furry vaginas and buttholes. Okay, let’s forget about the Snyder Cut because the Butthole Cut of Cats is what we really should be focusing on.
With the #ReleaseTheButtholeCut movement continuing to gain momentum, the only responsible thing for Universal Studios to do is to just release this mythical Butthole Cut of Cats because it is what the people want. Hell, they may even make more money with this version of the film than the original.
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