Celebrity / Movies
Long Duk Dong and Lumberjack actors Gedde Watanabe and Deborah Pollack describe 'Sixteen Candles' deleted scenes you never got to see.
Published on August 9, 2020
3 min readSixteen Candles is the story of Samantha (Molly Ringwald), a teenager whose parents forget her 16th birthday. The classic John Hughes comedy is filled with memorable characters like Samantha’s dreamboat Jake (Mike Schoeffling), the Geek (Anthony Michael Hall), Caroline (Haviland Morris) and foreign exchange student Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe).
It turns out Dong had even more to do in the original cut of Sixteen Candles. On the new Arrow Video Blu-ray edition, Watanabe and costar Deborah Pollack, who played Dong’s love interest, Lumberjack, reminisced about the film and shared details about their deleted scenes.
John Hughes shot more ‘Sixteen Candles’ than a single film had room for
Hughes was famous for writing his teen movies. His words were gospel, but Pollack said he would let his actors improvise. He wouldn’t always use it, but he’d film it.
“The interesting thing, and it also goes to show how brilliant John Hughes was, he let actors just go and he shot it,” Pollack said. “He actually shot a lot of extra things that never got into the movie, otherwise it would be Sixteen Candles, Seventeen Candles, Eighteen Candles.”
A leftover from a deleted scene remains in ‘Sixteen Candles’
Sometimes deleted scenes leave souvenirs in the movie. You might notice Lumberjack and Dong drive up to a house with a tray of food attached to the window. That’s from a scene they filmed but didn’t end up in Sixteen Candles.
When we go to drop Molly Ringwald off at her house, why was that tray there? Because we went to that hot dog place in downtown Chicgao. We went to this hot dog stand. It was a big dome and there were hot dogs dancing on top of the roof. The Chicago city police had to hold people back because there were so many people that found out we were filming there that night. We had to be escorted from our trailers to the set. That was a fun night. We were there all night long.
Deborah Pollack, Sixteen Candles Blu-rayThere’s no trace of Long Duk Dong and Lumberjack’s ‘Sixteen Candles’ love scene
Sixteen Candles was rated PG, so they couldn’t show anything explicit. Still, the original script had a love scene for Dong and Lumberjack. Pollack recalls the elaborate way she covered up for the scene.
“I had never done anything like that,” Pollack said. “My dear friend Haviland Morris, who played Caroline, actually was my shield. I had a bathrobe on and I had a body stalking on because it was supposed to look like we were naked. I think you had your white T-shirt on. Haviland was like shielding me from everybody. I would take off my bathrobe and Haviland would hold it so I could slide into the bed. That’s how Haviland adn I got to be very good friends.”
Long Duk Dong and Lumberjack had a third guest in their love scene
This love scene sounds so wacky, it’s a shame the scene itself does not appear on the Blu-ray. However, Pollack’s recollection is mighty detailed and refreshed Watanabe’s memory too.
“One of the funny scenes, do you remember, there was a scene where you and I were in bed,” Pollack said. “We were in bed with the housekeeper of the big house and she’s speaking Spanish and you’re doing your thing. Were we smoking a joint? We were smoking cigarettes.”
Watanabe added, “Because we had our fling. Was it good for you?”
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