‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’ Commentary Track Reveals Scrapped Nods To ‘Back To The Future’ And ‘Black Widow’

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story debuted earlier this year, depicting the life of the self-proclaimed weirdest musical artist there is, Weird Al Yankovic. With the film recently getting a physical release, discussions on the commentary track included with the disc reveal that the film almost had references to Back To The Future and Black Widow thrown into the mix. 

While both nods would have come toward the end, the final reasons for removing each were very different. ComicBook.com points out that the Back To The Future nod was cut as a creative choice, while the reference to Black Widow would have had too high a price tag. 

The Back To The Future reference would have fit in during the film’s ending, showing Yankovic performing “Amish Paradise,” his parody of Coolio’s “Gangster’s Paradise.” The reference to Back To The Future would come in with a cousin of Coolio calling him up and having him listen to the performance, like how Marvin Berry called up his cousin, Chuck Berry, while Marty McFly was performing “Johnny B. Goode.” 

“And you probably heard in the commentary session that there was talk about doing the joke about [Coolio’s cousin calling him during the performance and saying], ‘Hey Coolio, you know that new sound you’re looking for? Listen to this,'” Yankovic himself noted. “We didn’t want to extend [the verisimilitude] too much; we just wanted to have a little nod to having Coolio in the audience,” he explained.

The nod to Black Widow would come during the film’s ending credits. The solo outing for Scarlett Johansson’s hero ended with a cover of Nirvana’s  “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” performed by Malia J. Initially, the idea for Weird’s end credits was for it to have a cover of Yankovic’s parody, “Smells Like Nirvana,” to be performed like it was in Black Widow. 

Yankovic said that they had the songs from his discography that was intended, “but by and large, anytime you want to use a master recording that’s not your own, it’s a bit pricey. And we were a fairly low-budget movie, and we couldn’t afford anything that wasn’t fairly cheap.”

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is accessible on streaming and disc.