Weird: Al Yankovic's story cut hilarious Weird Al and Madonna dating montage [Exclusive]

"Weird: The Story of Al Yankovic" had a miniscule budget and was shot in just 18 days. Filming was so short that Aaron Paul, who played Weird Al in the short Funny or Die on which the film is based, was scheduled to make an appearance but contracted COVID and was unable to recover in time to shoot. Because of that crunch, Weird Al and Madonna's elaborate love montage ended up on the chopping block. Director and co-writer Eric Appel spoke to /Film's Ethan Anderton about the difficult decision to drop the footage:

"There was a fun dating montage between Al and Madonna that we ended up, just for time and budget reasons, we had to lose, which was like, they're on tandem bikes, they give duck bread, they drink a milkshake together in a restaurant, and Al puts a dollop of whipped cream on Madonna's nose, and she fucks him cold, then he has a steak on his eye, they're in a butchery laughing. But it was just too much. It would have taken a whole day, a day and change probably, to shoot a sequence that would have ended up being a minute long, so we had to lose it."

The edit may have been incredibly funny, like the rest of the movie, but I'm actually kinda glad it didn't come to fruition. The montage of absurd encounters was already perfected in 1988's "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!" between Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley, which included the brilliant banter of them leaving Oliver Stone's "Platoon" cackle. It's a comedic beat we know and expect, and the familiar beats here should be from the biopic, not other comedies. In the end, the right path prevailed.