Video: The 1968 Odd Couple Recut As A Drama

Every now and again, I get contacted by people requesting that I cover their film or post their video on this site.  Earlier this week, that happened when YouTube user Johnnie Hobbs emailed me:

I recently recut a dramatic trailer to the 1968 comedy “The Odd Couple”. They are fun to watch and this was fun to do. I am BIG FAN of the original movie and wanted to see if I could challenge myself to take the comedy out of one of the funniest movies of all time. Its amazing what you can do with dark music and iMovie. So, here, for your sharing and viewing pleasures is my recut of “The Odd Couple” (1968)

If you don’t know, The Odd Couple is a Neil Simon comedy starring Walter Matthau as a slovenly sportswriter and Jack Lemmon as a neat freak, both middle-aged divorcees who decide to move in together.  Well, that’s just comedy gold right there, although the film has a slightly darker edge than you might expect.  It opens with Lemmon attempting and failing to commit suicide…twice!  Still, hilarity ensues, as it did again with the same pair in The Odd Couple 2 in 1998, with different actors in the TV show version from 1970 to 1975, with African-American actors for one season of The New Odd Couple (1982-83) and now again with Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon in CBS’ current remake. Well, I can’t say that hilarity truly ensued with all of those iterations of the franchise because, in truth, I’ve only ever seen the first film and a stray episode or two of the original TV show.  That’s enough to appreciate how easy it is to change the tone with “dark music and iMovie”: I give Johnnie credit for not going a slightly more tired route and dropping Brokeback Mountain music over everything to make it seem like some kind of same-sex romantic drama.  Plus, I loved seeing the old Gulf & Western Paramount logo at the front.  Interestingly, Turner Classic Movies actually got in on this craze of genre-switching classic movies via recut trailers, and not too long ago if you were watching the channel you would have seen this commercial making it seem like The Odd Couple was some kind of modern thriller: