We at Paramount Home Media Distribution are thrilled to announce a 40th anniversary edition of the musical Grease for release on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc.
Over the last two years, we had the pleasure of working with director Randal Kleiser to restore Grease to its original vibrancy, with the highest quality sound, picture resolution, and color. The original negative was scanned and received extensive clean up and color correction using previously unavailable digital restoration tools such as high dynamic range (HDR) technology.
During the restoration process, several fascinating elements of the classic film that had never been visible on earlier, lower-resolution formats like DVD were revealed. Fine details in the Pink Ladies’ dresses, text on signs hanging on the walls of Rydell High, and, most critically, we discovered that Barry Pearl, the actor portraying Doody, the wild T-Bird who provides many of the feature’s laughs, had his penis hanging through the zipper hole of his blue jeans throughout the entire film.
After discovering that nearly thirty-one minutes of screen time have always included this exposed penis — inadvertently blurred-out by the lesser picture quality of earlier home-video formats — director Randal Kleiser and the groundbreaking visual effects team at Weta Digital painstakingly went into the film and digitally lengthened Barry Pearl’s penis frame-by-frame because Kleiser insisted men had bigger penises in the nineteen-fifties.
We hosted an internal screening of the new version of the film for the Paramount executives and their families, where CEO Bob Bakish immediately made us stop the projector and go back in and erase what he called a disgusting aberration and a sin.
Director Randal Kleiser was banned from the Paramount lot and the film’s producer Robert Stigwood was called in to supervise the new digital effects pass. At great expense, Stigwood spent seven months working with the cutting-edge artists at Weta to digitally add a new pair of blue jeans on top of Doody’s huge penis, to ensure no viewer would be offended. But during internal reviews, Stigwood realized Doody’s massive bulge changed the character dynamics of the film. If Doody packed such heat, Stigwood said, he’d have more power within the T-Birds. The character relationships in this version just didn’t make sense, and so Stigwood and the Weta team, with additional support from Fuse FX in New York City, spent six months going back into the film frame-by-frame to enlarge Danny, Kenickie, Sonny, and Putzie’s bulges, so they all dance with undeniable meat, and, crucially, the audience knows where Doody stands in the group’s hierarchy.
CEO Bob Bakish again demanded we stop the film three minutes into the internal screening. He said the bulges were repulsive and the digital blue jeans were distracting and unnecessary, and he fired Robert Stigwood on the spot and banned him from all Paramount property forever. By this point, director Randal Kleiser had completed the counseling program Paramount HR had assigned, and he apologized for what he’d done before. Bob Bakish allowed him back to complete the film’s restoration, but only after Kleiser promised he wouldn’t pull any more stunts.
“We have to bring those cocks out,” Kleiser told the Home Media team, plus the four international visual effects companies joining via videocall, during his first meeting back. “I sang the song the pigs upstairs wanted to hear so they’d let me back in here, but I know what the film needs. They’re the T-Birds, god damn it. It’s not the chess club. They have fat pieces and they want the world to know. The singing and dancing always bothered me in this film. I never understood why anyone was doing it. But now that we know what we know, and we have this technology, I realize the story needs all those cocks out and proud and swinging around to make sense. All systems go. I am solely responsible for this decision and I will suffer the consequences.”
Four months later we had a cut featuring a huge, exposed penis on nearly every frame of the film. But we pulled Kleiser aside one day and asked how he was going to get this approved by Bakish. “The oldest trick in the book,” he said, and he had our editor create a layer called SPACESHIP. A massive, CGI spaceship hovered in the center of the frame for the film’s entire runtime, blocking out Danny, Sandy, and all the T-Birds’ cocks.
Bakish screamed two minutes into the premiere. He was furious with the spaceship, saying it made no sense. Kleiser winked at our team and stood up in the screening room and passionately argued for the spaceship. Bakish stood his ground and eventually Kleiser said he’d agree to delete the spaceship if the rest of the film was approved. Bakish accepted the deal, not knowing that behind the spaceship were five astonishing dicks.
With the CEO’s approval, we locked the film and pressed the 4K discs. Fans all over the world will now get to forever enjoy Grease with the best picture and sound quality available, while experiencing the classic story as originally intended by its director, with all five T-Birds singing and dancing while their tremendous flaccid penises slap against their thighs throughout the entire film.
