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The Birds

Saturday Night Live 2020 Season 46 Episode 5

SKETCH-O-VISION

A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.

The setup

Cinema Classics host Reese De'What unveils a lost alternate scene in which Hitchcock tries, and fails, to explain The Birds.

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Community rating

8.0 / 10

The premise

Here’s the bit.

On a Halloween edition of PBS's Cinema Classics, Reese De'What introduces Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and a recently unearthed alternate scene meant to spell out the birds' motives. Trapped in a phone booth, Tippi Hedren's heroine calls Sheriff McCafferty, who demands an explanation as she reports gulls setting a gas station ablaze, wielding a glass cutter and a knife, and killing a passerby. A second version brings the sheriff into the booth as the birds lay eggs, moon them and launch turtles that bully sandwiches, until Hedren abandons the search for meaning and asks for a kiss. Reese explains that test audiences hated the footage and that it was cut for adding more than a day to the film's running time.

The funny people

Meet the cast. 4

Say it with us

Highly quotable.

The birds, they just birded a man to death.

Has anyone said, like, shoo, get out of here, bird?

The birds have picked up turtles to use as battering rams!

ScriptEnglish · 44 turns

Automatically generated script; wording may contain errors. Speaker labels are inferred.

00:01
Speaker 1
You're watching Cinema Classics on PBS.
00:05
Reese De'What
Good Hallows' Eve to you. I am Reese DeFuat, and what's that behind you? I'm just kidding. Tonight, we take a look at Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 horror thriller, The Birds, starring Tippi Hendren as a woman menaced by birds for reasons that are never explained.
00:28
Reese De'What
Why did Hitchcock not clarify what the birds were up to? I do not know. I am a bad guesser. Just asked my wife, who asked me to guess what she was going to be for Halloween, and I said, I don't know. Drunk on rum.
00:44
Reese De'What
Worst double bubble bath ever. Let's look now at a recently unearthed alternate scene in which Hitchcock tries to really spell out what's going on with the birds. Here we go.
01:10
Tippi Hedren
Get me the sheriff.
01:12
Sheriff McCafferty
This is Sheriff McCafferty. What's the emergency?
01:16
Tippi Hedren
Birds.
01:18
Sheriff McCafferty
I'm sorry. Did you just kind of gently whisper the word birds? What does that mean?
01:23
Tippi Hedren
It means birds. The flappy, flappy things. They're trying to kill everybody.
01:35
Tippi Hedren
You've got to do something, please. These birds, they're the jerk of the year.
01:41
Sheriff McCafferty
Has anyone said, like, shoo, get out of here, bird, like, with a hand wave?
01:45
Tippi Hedren
No. No, there's too many and they're too mean.
01:48
Sheriff McCafferty
Okay, so... So these are birds of prey, like a hawk or an eagle?
01:52
Tippi Hedren
No. No, they're seagulls. You know, the little guys that eat french fries at the beach. Oh, no! Station.
02:04
Sheriff McCafferty
How?
02:06
Tippi Hedren
Sir, I cannot explain it.
02:07
Sheriff McCafferty
No, no, no, no. You just said that a bird set fire to a gas station, so you need to explain that to me.
02:14
Tippi Hedren
Maybe the bird took a cigarette from someone and then, like, flapped it into the gas box. I do not know.
02:27
Sheriff McCafferty
What's happening?
02:27
Tippi Hedren
The birds, they just birded a man to death. Oh, no! One of the birds found a glass cutter.
02:35
Tippi Hedren
He's right.
02:47
Sheriff McCafferty
Ma'am, you are hysterical. There is no way this is all happening because of a bunch of no-good... I have to call you back.
02:59
Reese De'What
I got to tell you, though, test audiences positively hated this new version, almost as much as my wife hates vacuuming. You know what? I'm sorry. That is not fair. She is a good woman.
03:20
Reese De'What
Still worried that audiences would not be scared enough by birds, Hitchcock filmed yet another version of the scene, adding even more sources of potential terror. Let's watch.
03:30
Tippi Hedren
Well, thank God you came. These are the birds that are doing it all.
03:35
Sheriff McCafferty
I'm very sorry I doubted you.
03:37
Tippi Hedren
The birds are trying to be very mean.
03:40
Sheriff McCafferty
What's that one doing?
03:44
Tippi Hedren
It's mooning us.
03:50
Sheriff McCafferty
An egg. It's trying to be nice, so we have breakfast.
03:54
Tippi Hedren
Oh, they're trying to make more birds.
03:57
Sheriff McCafferty
Okay, that's it. I'm going to start shooting my gun off in here and see what happens.
04:02
Tippi Hedren
No, you dummy. You'll kill us. And it's too late. The birds have picked up turtles to use as battering rams.
04:10
Sheriff McCafferty
Oh, my God. They've entered phase two of their plan. They're putting the turtles on people like hacks. And squeezing people's heads until they die.
04:23
We're on the phone! We're on the phone!
04:26
Tippi Hedren
Oh, no! The turtles have now picked up sandwiches!
04:31
Sheriff McCafferty
Oh, I get it. The turtles are bullying the sandwiches like the birds bullied the turtles. It's a cycle.
04:37
Tippi Hedren
And now the turtles have learned to fly without the help of the birds.
04:41
Sheriff McCafferty
As have the sandwiches.
04:43
Sheriff McCafferty
Is this a lesson about man's lack of respect for nature?
04:47
Tippi Hedren
Oh, I don't know. Damn it, I don't know. Just kiss me.
04:50
Sheriff McCafferty
What? No, that's not this.
04:53
Tippi Hedren
Oh.
04:55
Reese De'What
Ultimately, this alternate scene was scrapped after an assistant editor pointed out that it had added over a day to the film's total running time. Happy Halloween, everyone. For Cinema Classics, I have been Reese DeFwaite.