The Karate Kid That Could Have Been

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So it turns out The Karate Kid director John Avildsen hung onto a lot of old rehearsal footage from the early days of filming the best coming-of-age martial arts film of all time. (Sorry, Surf Ninjas, but it’s true.) Now, courtesy of Avildsen’s YouTube channel, you can get a peek at more than an hour of behind-the-scenes, never meant for primetime Ralph Macchio goodness. The result is a treasure trove of shaky footage that puts most other special features to shame. Above, you can check out the early, raw version of the Cobra Kai assault that gets the film’s narrative chugging along. In the interest of fair warning, the dialogue is more foul-mouthed than the final cut, and may be NSFW if your W is particularly uptight about that sort of thing.

(via Slate)

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