Beavis and Butt-Head Do America

Beavis and Butt-head Do America is the first major motion picture adaptation of "Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-Head".

• Creator: Mike Judge
• Created: December 20, 1996
• Budget: $12,000,000
• Previous: Buy Beer
• Next: Butt, Butt, Hike!

Summary

The film opens with a surreal dream; Butt-head is now "Butt-Kong", and he battles the fire-breathing "Beaviszilla". This was revealed to be Butt-head's dream, which Beavis wakes him from. Beavis explains that their TV has been stolen in the night. Attempting to analyze the situation from the differences in the house, looking at a broken windows, muddy footprints leading to the TV, Butt-Head then simply claims to have figured out that the scenario "sucks more than anything that has ever sucked before", and that they must "find this butt-hole that took [their] TV". They then embark on a quest to find their TV set.

The film opens with a 70s cop theme (song by the late Isaac Hayes).

After a 70's-esque opening, Beavis and Butt-head begin searching for the television. Butt-head suggests that they check Highland High. The duo decide to steal a TV from the AV club room, only to be stopped by Mr. Van Driessen. Beavis and Butt-Head told him that their TV got stolen, about which Mr. Van Driessen wasn't sympathetic. Instead, he unsuccessfully tried to make them understand that it could be a good thing for the boys which could lead to them being more open to life experience and that they should forget about TV. Beavis and Butt-Head laugh at him. They leave Mr. Van Driessen to go out the front door, and accidentally drop the TV off the A/V cart down the front steps, destroying the TV, much to Beavis' dismay. Principal McVicker sees this as he's walking out the door, and expels the boys, who then wander off to find another TV set.

The duo come across Tom Anderson's new camper, which Tom's wife Marcy kindly lets them into after they say they're "here to fix the TV". They start watching the camper's TV, and Beavis helped himself to a cola, which wasn't cold, so Beavis spat the cola out onto the TV, destroying it. Marcy tells Tom Anderson that the two are here to fix the TV, to which he replies, "The TV ain't broken!". Butt-Head then responds, "Uhh, yeah it is!". Tom then asked, "Aren't you them two kids that've been whackin' off in my toolshed?", not having fully recognized the two for their previous shenanigans. Beavis and Butthead hide their laugh, which implies that they're the culprits.

Later, they find a cheap motel lineup which advertised "full-color TV". They approach the complex, barging into doors, interrupting McVicker's X-rated session, they find the open room of Muddy Grimes (Bruce Willis), who, in a drunken state, believes that the two are the hitmen that he just hired. He offers them to "do" his wife, Dallas (Demi Moore), who left him with nothing. Butt-Head misconstrues "do" (murder-job) with "do" (intercourse), so they gladly comply. Beavis refuses at first until Butthead convinces him that they could easily buy a new, big-screen TV with their would-be earnings. The next morning, Muddy books the two on a plane to Las Vegas, and drunk-drives Beavis and Butt-Head to the Highland airport, asking them to retrive a leather satchel. On the plane, they meet an old woman named Martha (Cloris Leachman), who Beavis believes to be a slut. The plane takes off, and Beavis gets ahold of Martha's "No-Drowz" pills, becoming "Cornholio" once more. Beavis then barges into the cockpit, scaring the living daylights out of the pilots who accidentally spin the plane out of control as a result. . They land in Las Vegas, where a limo driver with a sign that says "Mr. Beavis and Mr. Butt-Head" catches their attention and then informs them that they have a limo waiting. They arrive at a casino, dancing the night away.

Meanwhile, back at Highland, the Moving Men who were the actual hitmen Muddy had really hired, who had stolen Beavis and Butthead's TV, finally show up at Muddy's hotel room. Muddy realizes that the two kids, Beavis and Butthead, weren't hitmen at all, so he heads to Vegas to kill his wife and the duo.

The next morning, after receiving a hotel room Muddy booked for them next to Dallas Grimes' room, Beavis and Butt-Head come across Dallas, Muddy's aforementioned wife. Dallas plants a dangerous biological warfare agent, known only as the "X-5 Unit", in Beavis's shorts after the boys reveal that "this drunk dude" sent them to "do" her for ten grand. She understands that the boys thought that by "do her", they thought that their task was to fornicate with her. Dallas proceeds to manipulate the two, promising that they can score with her if they meet her in DC. She books them a "DreamAmerica" tour bus, and sends them off.

Dallas is later interrogated by Agent Flemming, ATF (Robert Stack of "Airplane!" fame). He and his sidekick Bork can only legally hold her for a short time, so they let her go after realizing that she won't tell them anything.

Meanwhile, Beavis and Butt-Head discover that Martha and her husband Jim are on the bus, and they make a visit to the Hoover Dam. The boys enter the Hoover Dam's control room, and carelessly play with and scratch their butts on all the controls, which causes the system to go awry, destroying the Hoover Dam. Nearby, Tom and his wife are washed away from the dam by the excessive force of the water.

Back at the ATF building, Flemming explains the extremely dangerous nature of the highly sensitive X-5 unit, which will activate if it is hit at any forceful velocity. The agents discover an elevator-security snapshot of Beavis and Butt-Head. Then, they discover that Beavis and Butt-Head destroyed the Hoover Dam, which Flemming believed that they did to cut the power to get away. Flemming dubs them "the most dangerous men in America", and sends out the fullest possible search for them after also discovering that they came from Dallas's room.

The duo and the seniors make trips all around the US, Flemming and Bork ever-so closer to catching the "crooks". The bus stops at "Old Faithful" geyser, and one of the tour guides recognizes Beavis and Butt-Head passing by on foot. He calls in Flemming, who sends out a head-hunt of SWATs after the giggling boys. At the geyser, the boys board the wrong bus—a bus full of nuns instead of the Dream America bus. They semi-befriend the ladies, and mess around in the church's "port-o-potties" (confessionals). Just before the boys were about to board the bus, the bus is struck by a random, inexplicable bolt of lightning (implying that God wasn't happy with their church shenanigans). They are ditched by the nuns at the Petrified Forest, they ask a civilian how far away Washington DC, who points toward the general direction of DC and says it's "about 2,000 miles that way". The two take the man's advice, and proceed to walk straight through the vast desert wilderness to DC.

Meanwhile, Tom ran into the ATF. The ATF showed the picture of the boys to Tom, who recognized them. Because Tom knew them, the ATF begin searching his camper. Later, Flemming and Bork head to Highland when they got a report of Cornholio from the airport. When the ATF got to Highland, they raid Beavis's and Butthead's home and the hotel room in which Muddy was staying. They later raid Highland High School and begin questioning the school faculty about the boys. When Flemming questioned Van Driessen about the boys, he didn't answer Flemming's question. After Van Driessen mentioned "due process", the ATF knock him out and they take him into custody. Flemming then blames principal McVicker for harboring two criminal masterminds. The rest of the students get cavity-searched, as a result of Flemming's insistence on maximum possible thoroughness in their search for the duo.

Beavis and Butthead, still traveling through the desert, come across two old guys, appearing with near-exact resemblances to them. These men are revealed later by Flemming to be ex-Mötley Crüe roadies/drifters who are also, through forensic DNA analysis, reviealed to be Beavis and Butt-Head's biological fathers. Butt-Head's dad (David Letterman, falsely credited as "Earl Hofert") even shows off a trick involving a fart and a campfire. Beavis and Butt-Head, however, never become aware that they were their fathers.

Since that point Beavis and Butthead have fallen asleep, and the two older men have left. The duo continues walking until they become so exhausted that have to crawl, only a half-mile from the highway. Beavis eats a deserted peyote cactus because he is almost certain that cacti contain water. Having eaten the peyote cactus sends him into a hallucinogenic trip, and the two fall asleep again.

Muddy finds them the next morning, but before he can kill them, they reveal that they only need to go to DC to "do" her. Muddy locks them in his trunk, and sets off to DC. They find an old jack in the trunk, which they humorously play with which causes the trunk to be force open, and the two accidentally fall out onto the freeway street. The driver of an 18-wheeler swerves to miss the two, which causes the truck to tip over onto its side, blocking any and all traffic on the road cause a traffic pileup as more and more cars crash into the wrecked semi. Muddy travels to DC, not knowing that the two are no longer in his trunk. Flemming and Bork see Beavis and Butt-head on the news broadcast about the highway disaster and they realize that the two are heading to Washington DC. Beavis and Butt-Head are reunited with the Dream America tour bus, and much later arrive in DC where Dallas sees the boys and parks her car, intently trying to meet up with them and to recover the weapon until Muddy shows up. They arrive at the White House after the Capitol (where they announce over the PA system that "they're ready to score" with the "chick with big boobs" after the secretary leaves the two with her announcement microphone still active). Beavis becomes upset with, and makes a demoralized, hopeless rant on the bus about the fact that the two have traveled 100 miles thinking they were going to score but they haven't yet, and probably never will score. The bus driver unsuccessfully tells Beavis to shut up, and then knocks some sense into him because he still doesn't.

Later, Beavis drinks a large amount of coffee and eats a cupful of sugar cubes, and once again becomes Cornholio, disrupting the US in the Oval Office, accesses the president's phone and sets the nation to Defcon 4. He wanders off in a group of foreigners, and ends up "whackin'" in Anderson's camper with a small photo of Dallas.

Butt-Head, alone in the white house, comes across the room of Chelsea Clinton and awkwardly attempts flirtation, which causes him to be defenestrated from her window. He is then immediately surrounded by the SWATs and Flemming, resulting in him getting a "deep and hard" cavity-search from Agent Hurley, which makes Butt-Head think he just scored. Beavis/Cornholio is thrown from Tom Anderson's camper, and, without shorts and in underwear, parades back and forth down the road in front of the SWAT's readily armed firing squad. Just before Flemming is going to give the squad the command to fire, Tom Anderson jumps out of the camper in anger/shock, with Beavis's pants that the agents know contain the X-5 Unit, in his grasp. An ATF agent lunges and tries to yank the pants from Anderson's hold, haphazardly grabbing the pants, but, unfortunately manages to rip the pants, sending the X-5 Unit soaring through the air to the shocking, fear-ridden suspense of the ATF squad surrounding them. The unit lands safely in Butt-Head's barely extended hand. Knowing absolutely nothing about the object he's holding, kindly hands it to an ATF agent. The agents, now having secured the unit, then celebrate the relief of the security of the nation. The agents and Flemming arrest Tom and throw him in the back of an armored SWAT van with the previously-arrested Muddy and Dallas when the squad find a picture of Dallas in Tom's camper, with the belief that Tom is an accomplice of Muddy and Dallas, who they believed were trying to frame Beavis and Butt-head.

Flemming apologises to Beavis & Butt-Head and admits that he was wrong about them and their actions will remain top secret.

Beavis & Butt-Head are escorted by Flemming to the office of Bill Clinton, Beavis and Butthead are sad seeing him, who officially announces them ATF agents, they become ecstatic to be in the bureau of "beer, cigarettes, FIRE-arms, and chicks".

Their plane lands back in Highland, and, while walking home, they were not happy that they didn't score and they didn't get any money, however, they found their stolen TV. They walk back to their house with it, insulting each other with rude names. Beavis exclaims his need to stop in Anderson's tool shed, in a reference to "whackin'" once more.

Backmasking

During the desert scene when Beavis and Butt-Head have their hallucination, backmasking occurs in which Beavis says, "I suggest that everybody go to college and study hard." in reverse.

Guest voices

• Bruce Willis - Muddy Grimes (uncredited in the end credits from the theatrical version; credited in the home video version), a robber and criminal, after the X-5 unit.
• Demi Moore - Dallas Grimes (uncredited in the end credits from the theatrical version; credited in the home video version), formerly married to Muddy, she plants the X-5 in Beavis's shorts.
• Cloris Leachman - Martha, the old woman on the plane and bus, who befriends "Travis" and "Bob-Head".
• Robert Stack - ATF Agent Flemming, the agent after "criminals" Beavis and Butt-Head, believing that they have stolen the X-5 chip.
• Greg Kinnear - ATF Agent Bork (uncredited), Flemming's right-hand man and generally smarter than his boss.
• Richard Linklater - Tour Bus Driver, a "DreamAmerica" driver who eventually attacks Beavis.
• David Letterman - Mötley Crüe Roadie#1 - a.k.a. Butt-Head's Dad (credited as Earl Hofert), a drifter who shares the same traits and characteristics as Butt-Head himself. Likes farting on campfires, creating mushroom-clouds in the process.
• Tony Darling - Mötley Crüe Roadie#2 - a.k.a Beavis's Dad, who is constantly abused by Butt-Head's dad. He wears worn-out Converse and, like Beavis, has a severe case of pyromania.

Deleted scene

When Beavis and Butt-Head Do America premiered on MTV on August 7, 1999, an additional cut scene followed the movie. While visiting the National Archives, Beavis attempts to take a dump but cannot due to the absence of toilet paper in the stall. Butt-Head is equally angry because the urinals lack the automatic flushing mechanisms that had amazed him in Yellowstone National Park. After the rest of their tour group finished looking at the encased Declaration of Independence, Beavis sneaks out, breaks the glass with the US flagpole and steals it to use as "T.P. for his bunghole." While Archive guards rush to see what happened, Beavis cleans up, and exits the stall with a piece of the Declaration, containing John Hancock's signature, stuck to his shoe. The scene does not appear on the recently released DVD, although it is mentioned on the disc's commentary track. In the track, Judge noted that the scene did not test well.^{[citation needed]}

Another alternate scene was done for when Butt-Head meets Chelsea Clinton in her bedroom, which showed her packing up to leave the White House. This alternate scene was made in the event Bill Clinton lost his 1996 re-election bid to Bob Dole.

Soundtrack

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Soundtrack by Various Artists
Released	November 5, 1996
Recorded	1995-1996
Genre	Heavy metal, alternative rock, Hard Rock, ska punk, Hip Hop
Length	49:00
Label	Geffen
Professional reviews
*Allmusic link

1. "Two Cool Guys" - Isaac Hayes - 3:06
2. "Love Rollercoaster" - Red Hot Chili Peppers - 4:37
3. "Ain't Nobody" - LL Cool J - 4:38
4. "Ratfinks, Suicide Tanks and Cannibal Girls" - White Zombie - 3:53
5. "I Wanna Riot" - Rancid with Stubborn All-Stars - 3:59
6. "Walk on Water " - Ozzy Osbourne - 4:18 *
7. "Snakes" - No Doubt - 4:34
8. "Pimp'n Ain't EZ" - Madd Head - 4:21
9. "The Lord Is a Monkey" (Rock Version) - Butthole Surfers - 4:44
10. "White Trash" - Southern Culture on the Skids - 2:03
11. "Gone Shootin'" - AC/DC - 5:05
12. "Lesbian Seagull" - Engelbert Humperdinck - 3:39

Noticeably missing are Mucha Muchacha, the version of Lesbian Seagull with Mr. Van Driessen singing, and the score tracks, which were released on a separate album.

"Two Cool Guys", written and performed by soul and funk icon Isaac Hayes, is a semi-parody of Hayes' Academy Award-winning "Theme from Shaft". It incorporates the theme from the Beavis and Butt-head television series as a rhythm guitar line, and series creator Mike Judge, who wrote the theme, is given a co-writing credit with Hayes in the soundtrack liner notes.

• The version of Ozzy Osbourne's "Walk on Water" is not the same version included in the film. The film actually used an earlier demo version, while the soundtrack itself contains a later, more revised and complete version. The original demo, which appears in the film, can be found on Osbourne's Prince of Darkness box set. "Walk on Water" was released as a single and peaked at number 28 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks.

Rating

The movie was rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for continuous crude sex-related humor and language, and for a drug-related scene. It was also given a 12 by the BBFC for "frequent moderate sex references".

Awards and nominations

BMI Film & TV Awards

One award:

• BMI Film Music Award for John Frizzell

MTV Movie Awards 1997

One nomination:

• Best On-Screen Duo: Beavis & Butt-Head

DVD release

The movie was released on DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment in 1999. The bonus features on the disc were a widescreen presentation, and two theatrical trailers.

The movie was re-released on a Special Edition DVD in 2006 as "The Edition That Doesn't Suck!." It contained more in the way of bonus features such as audio commentaries, Spanish language tracks, more theatrical trailers, "Making of" documentaries, and more. It lacks the deleted National Archives scene.

Trivia

• Paramount executives considered making this a live-action movie.
• In the desert scene, where Beavis and Butthead hallucinate, voices are heard in the background. When the soundtrack is played backwards, Beavis and Butthead are heard speaking clearly, including phrases such as "Everybody go to college, study hard, study hard."
• Major Beavis and Butt-Head characters that never appeared in the movie at all include Stewart (even his mother and father), Coach Buzzcut, Todd, the Burger World Manager and the Maxi-Mart Owner.
• One of the people sitting in the circle when the teacher sings "Lesbian Seagull" is Daria Morgendorffer, who later got her own series.
• On classic MTV2 Airings of the movie, It has an end bumper after the credits where it shows silhouettes of Beavis and Butthead and the fire and explosion from the desert scene with them laughing in slow motion voices, it was considered on of the scariest bumpers ever made, and later on was edited out, on current airings of the film on MTV2, it stays black for 10 seconds until it ends
• There's a line in the script that indicates that if 'Bill Clinton' lost his re-election campaign in 1996, there would be a change to the scene where Butt-head meets Chelsea Clinton. In the regular movie, she's folding clothes. But the scene was written so she could also be packing a suitcase instead with only a minor addition to the scene.
• Beavis' hallucination scene in the desert was inspired by artwork drawn by Rob Zombie. The music of the scene is White Zombie's "Rat Finks, Suicide Tanks and Cannible Girls".
• When Beavis and Butt-Head try to steal the TV from the high school, and Mr. Van Driessen stops them the Geffen Prodctions logo can be seen on the chalkboard
• Muddy's red car is a 1972 Lincoln Continental Mark IV.
• Owing to the success of the film, a sequel was planned to be released in 1999, but plans were eventually scrapped.
• Broke the box office receipts record for an opening weekend in December until Scream 2 was released the following year.
• The version of "Walk on Water" on the official soundtrack is not the version that is heard in the movie. The version you hear in the movie is actually the 'demo' version, and it appears on Disc 2 of Ozzy Osbourne's 'Prince of Darkness' boxed set.
• The name David Letterman chose as his credit for his voice-work in the film, Earl Hofert, is actually the name of his uncle, the same "Uncle Earl" Letterman routinely mocks on his show, especially for an incident where a drunk Uncle Earl supposedly said "Here, kitty kitty kitty" to the Thanksgiving turkey.
• A reference to Butane made by the Tom Anderson character was changed from Propane to avoid a connection to Mike Judge's other animated series King of the Hill.
• In the original cut, in the scene in which Principal McVicker is being spanked in the motel room, he was naked from the waist down. The animators had to give him boxer shorts in order to get a PG-13 rating.
• Mike Judge actually got the "is this a god dam" joke from his grandmother, and when she told him it, he didn't find it funny at all. Ironically, numerous viewers have since told Judge it's their favorite part of the movie.
• In the DVD commentary, 'Mike Judge' confesses that the guitar riff from Beavis and Butt-Head theme music is the riff from AC/DC's Gone Shootin' played backwards.
• All of the hotel/casinos shown in the Las Vegas scenes actually exist. In contrast, Mike Judge's "more serious" show, King of the Hill, used fake hotel/casinos during a visit to Vegas.
• Beavis and Butt-Head are never shown working their jobs at Burger World in the film, although this is briefly referenced during the hallucination scene.
• During the trek across the desert, the boys mention the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores, a rare mention of a real-world store chain on the show.
• The white trash hoodlums that steal Beavis and Butt-Head's TV are not unique to the movie. Their names are Ross and Harlan, and they previously appeared on the series robbing Stewart's house.