A Um, Deep Dive Into The Butthole Cut Of 'Cats' Phenomenon

If "the Butthole Cut of Cats" is insane gibberish to you, let's catch you up, because we've got a lot to cover. This week, after Hollywood writer and producer Ben Mekler idly expressed his desire for "a tell-all book about the making of cats" on Twitter, a user named Jack Waz just casually dropped the bombshell that "there exists a butthole cut of Cats."

The media promptly ... did something similar but decidedly did not pounce on the story, and #ReleaseTheButtholeCut dominated trending topics, which is quite a feat in these times. But is it true? After all, random nobodies make shit up on social media all the time just for kicks. Just who is this Jack Waz character? According to his profile, he's a writer who's worked on Hulu's shelved Howard the Duck series, and indeed, he appears to be a real working Hollywood professional with an IMDb page and everything. Would he risk his reputation in exchange for the attention of a butthole-hungry throng of quarantines? Well, if he's trolling, he's been doing it for months.

He also passed on every opportunity to double down on his claim when we spoke to him, confirming that he heard the story thirdhand and its source was never identified to him. That makes it seem like an open-and-shut "my uncle works at Nintendo" case, but wait! Waz was only the match that lit the butthole fire. Mekler later produced an email from "a CATS VFX crewmember who has asked to remain anonymous" that confirmed but clarified the story. However, it's unclear if Mekler vetted his anonymous butthole authority.

Universal Pictures itself was eventually forced to comment, telling Vanity Fair through a spokesperson that it was their "favorite email of ALL TIME" in that way that politicians laugh off accusations of crack-smoking and money-laundering as "ridiculous" without actually denying them. Indeed, they refused to confirm or deny the existence of the Butthole Cut.

We may never know if the Butthole Cut is real, but does it matter? The rumor itself is like a masterfully crafted suspense story: Every time you think you know what's going on, it knocks you on your ass, and you're no longer sure that even that has a hole. There's no way the Butthole Cut can live up to that, nor all the, um, artist's renderings of what it might look like. Perhaps the real Butthole Cut was the buttholes we made along the way.

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