Tank Girl Movie

The Outtakes

If you've gotten any of the trading cards, you may have been thinking, "Gee, I don't remember any of this, I must have been really out of it when I saw the movie." This isn't (well, it might not be) the case. The cards and the Making of... book were made before the final cuts, so they describe stuff that's not even in the film.

Anyway, the Director, Rachel Talalay, has been kind enuf to list several of these changes. These are the most annoying changes which bugged her most. There's lots more little changes which I'll list later. [Additional comments by me are in brackets].

The changes:

• Opening sequence where the comet crashes into the Earth and obliterates everything - lots of SpFx by the Skotaks . Little Rebecca in a trailer park, survives pathetically, like in Them!.
• Instead of all that lame-o voiceover which Lori and I hated at the beginning, there was a sequence at White Sands where an old lady sand hermit digs up a bottle of water, dances a little jig, then drinks it like in an orange juice commercial. then a Water and Power pilot finds she's taken water and brutally shoots her dead. He reclaims the water, but is attacked by a ripper. Tank Girl witnesses all this on her buffalo.
• Tank Girl goes home and gets stoned in her bedroom, where she goofs around with her dildo collection. She talks with Richard about how fucked up the world is.
• For some reason, they made me butcher the scene in the cold chamber/cold prison, which had a lot more funny jokes, like when Tank Girl asks Kesslee for some juice and a croissant. He shoots her up with cholera, before taking her to the pipe.
  [This scene is described on the trading card in this way, obviously the cards were made befor the final cuts.]
• There was an additional scene in the cold chamber where he offers her water and she spits it in his face, which motivates him putting her in the pipe.
  [Also described on the trading card]
• In Kesslee's office, they made me use the TV version of the line "If you wanna torture, spank me, ..." The real version was "fuck me" which got changed to "lick me". Go figure.
• The dance number had three additional lyrics
  • one with Jet Girl singing, where she goes from being really shy to being really wild.
  • One with little Sam singing, which was a great intro to the scene. She ends it by grabbing the guard's guns.
  • And one with TG doing a real Sid Vicious type lyric to screaming dancer fans.
• The infamous scene with Rebecca and Booga in bed.
  [A picture of this appears in the Making of... book.]
• Sub Girl - in the original script, Sub Girl was this real mystical space-cadet friend of TG's, who said all these insane things all of which turned out to be prophetic and true. She always said she knew the Rippers, which no one believed, until TG gets desperate and asks her anyway. She also said it was gonna rain and she was building this arc to save everyone.
  When we fell behind in shooting, her character had to pick up some informational slack about where Sam was, which didn't really work for what i'd planned for her, so we ended up with that pretty awful scene in her place. But we also shot her building her arc, which turned out to be a sand-submarine. At the end of the movie, she plows through the sand and helps the girls defeat water and power and free the prisoners by blowing up W/P.
  [On the trading card Sub Girl is names Subrina and it says that she is building a submarine for when the rains come.]
• Then there was a tag where it rained and TG/Jet G/and Sub Girl plan to take over the world (the umbrella hat shot) (rather than the animation). Someone in the obnoxious focus group said they didn't understand why it rained. So out it went. We put in the animation, which I liked anyway, but first time we screened it with the animation, someone in the focus group said I wish it had rained at the end. Then everyone agreed. I hate test screenings, especially when the studio takes one person's opinion to be gospel.
• They made me add a lot of lame voiceover, which still makes me cringe. Like "You guys can't shoot" in the semi chase - which had a lot more gags with TG using her squirt gun and putting a condom on a banana before throwing it at the guard.
  And one of the stupidest line changes was in the MedBay, where now Kesslee says "You see the glass half empty, I prefer to see it half full" The original line was "Doctor, about those pain killers, maybe you should take them yourself" she says "I don't underrstand" and Sgt. Small shoves the saver (water-sucker) into her back.
• There were a few additional scenes with Sgt. Small where we had a really stupid running joke about him being soaked by the waterfall curtain in Kesslee's office.

• Sam is Richard's daughter. In my mind, at least, that explains so much of why TG does what she does.

Movie Outtakes -- The Video

Ok. You all know how alot of the good parts of the Tank Girl movie were cut out. Well, an anonymous source has been kind enuf to compile a few of these cut scenes on a video tape and sell them at a nominal charge to whoever wants it.

The catch

The contents

• The pre-comet beginning (sloppy and incomplete)
• The opening desert part without the voice-over.
• The full dance number with parts by Jet Girl and Sam.
• Tank Girl and Booga in bed.
• Sub Girl at the end.
• The tag which Jamie Hewlett wrote.

The length

The cost

What it's not

So, email craneisland@earthlink.net to order a copy. You'll get full details on where and to whom you make out the check. Also if you have any questions about it that I haven't answered mail that address as well.