Ben Stiller‘s upcoming Christmas comedy Nutcrackers features an “eight-second fart” from one of the child actors, director David Gordon Green has revealed.
Following the comedy’s world premiere on Thursday night at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, Stiller and the four real-life brothers who co-star in the film appeared on stage for a Q&A, where they shared the details of a gassy incident that occurred on set.
“Before we stop talking, I’d like to talk about the farting at some point?” Stiller said (via Entertainment Weekly), turning toward the Janson brothers — Homer, Ulysses, and twins Atlas and Arlo — before the kid actors confirmed that one of them did, indeed, let out a sustained fart that was captured during filming.
“It was incredible, because we all cracked up,” Stiller, continued of the axed scene. “I wish it was in the movie. It’s not in the movie.”
However, Green then revealed that he actually managed to sneak the audio of the fart into different scene.
“The moment in my life they’re referring to is when the two twins are coming up to Ben’s character and trying to get a bedtime story out of him,” the Exorcist: Believer and Halloween director continued. “There’s an eight-second fart that happened that we edited out of the film, but I took the sound effect and put it [back in] earlier at the dinner table [scene], so the fart is still there, displaced. Nobody will ever know. It’s my secret!”
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Stiller then joked that the exchange was “probably the only fart conversation we’ll have at the whole festival.” TIFF kicked off on Thursday, September 5 and will conclude on Sunday, September 15.
In Nutcrackers, Stiller stars as a work-obsessed Chicago real estate developer who, following the death of his sister, travels to rural Ohio to assist a child services worker (Linda Cardellini) in finding a home for his four misbehaved nephews (portrayed by the Janson brothers), who harbour untapped talents as ballet dancers.
Stiller said that the film’s heart and soul attracted him to the lead role, and that he hopes the movie will acquire a distributor for cinemas following the festival.
“I think David and a bunch of filmmakers probably of our generation had this experience of going to movies and seeing movies like this in theaters,” he said at the end of the Q&A, after Green earlier compared the film to nostalgic classics like the 1976 comedy Bad News Bears.
“It’s important for us to try to have movies like this … theatrically because we need more movies like this on screens,” Stiller added. “For us it’s nostalgia, going back to what we grew up with, but I think it’s what people enjoy, gong to theaters to have an experience that can only happen in the theater. For me, the movie has so much heart.”
Elsewhere, Green recently explained why his planned Exorcist trilogy ended up being cancelled.