More Cats VFX Artists Speak Up about ‘Butthole Cut’ and Mistreatment from Director

Cats was a box office disaster when it came out, but we were treated to a whole new level of awful when it was revealed that VFX artists were hired to remove visible buttholes from the film. The internet has now been talking about the ‘Butthole Cut' of the film, and some VFX artists have come out to open up about their terrible experience working on the film.

According to an unnamed source from The Daily Beast, the VFX artists apparently discovered the ‘buttholes' midway through production. They explain:

"We paused it… We went to call our supervisor, and we're like, ‘There's a fucking asshole in there! There's buttholes!' It wasn't prominent but you saw it… And you [were] just like, ‘What the hell is that?... There's a fucking butthole in there.' It wasn't in your face—but at the same time, too, if you're looking, you'll see it."

To be clear, it wasn't anyone's intention to add buttholes to the film, but it was a result of the tech that was used to give actors fur.

Besides artists being hired to work on cat anuses, the VFX team was said to have been forced to work 90-hour work weeks, which some described as "almost slavery," with some artists even going so far as to sleep under their desks. What's more, when the film was finished, the artists were all laid off after the studio closed down.

What's more, it was also said that director Tom Hooper seemed to be inexperienced when it came to working on VFX. Artists would come to him with an incomplete rendering of a shot so the director could have a look at the motions, but Hooper apparently expected them to be completed, saying things like, "What's this garbage?" and "I don't understand— where's the fur?" Hooper would even go so far as to demand to see videos of cats dancing, (which they definitely don't do).

The source goes on to say:

"It was pure, almost slavery for us, how much work we put into it with no time, and everything was difficult… We were so rushed on the project that we'd have no time for anything. So when people say, ‘Oh, the effects were not good,' or ‘The animation's not good,' or anything, that's not our fault. We have no time. Six months to do a two-minute trailer and four months to do a film of an hour and a half. My math is pretty good... You could figure that doesn't make any sense."

While I love to laugh at how much the film is a train wreck, this news of mistreatment of the artists behind the film is outrageous. Hopefully we get a statement from Universal and Hooper himself about what went down with the movie.

Read Also: Watch: Someone Made a Trailer for the 'Butthole Cut' of Cats