Editor Megan dives into a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie mystery that she uncovered.

A few weeks ago, we ran a question that mentioned the 1998 Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen movie “Billboard Dad.” Like many other kids who grew up in the aughts, I had quite the Mary-Kate and Ashley VHS collection, and “Billboard Dad” was always one of my favorites. Is it a good movie? Absolutely not. Is the plot intriguing to 8-year-olds? Duh.

So here’s the gist: Mary-Kate and Ashley, in this case Tess and Emily, live in L.A. with their sculptor widower dad Max. They want their dad to find love and have a motherly figure in their lives again, so the twins take things into their own hands. There’s a vacant billboard on Sunset Boulevard, so under the cover of night the girls and their friend climb up and paint an ad, in hopes of finding an eligible bachelorette in the city. He becomes an overnight sensation, eventually meets a nice lady, and the twins stop an art theft along the way. Normal tween girl stuff.

The one thing that’s bothered me about the movie since I first watched it as a kid is the titular billboard. The photo below is what it looked like in the VHS that I watched, as well as the digital version I rented on YouTube when I was feeling nostalgic a couple of years ago.

On the left, the billboard before they start painting. On the right, the billboard after.

Even as an elementary schooler I never understood how the twins managed to paint a photorealistic portrait of their father on the billboard — using only blue paint, I might add. I know that Mary-Kate and Ashley direct-to-video movies are not up to the standard of the Academy or the Criterion Collection (check out this scene from “Passport to Paris” for another example, or their very ’90s musical tour of the Mall of America food court), but they should at least be up to the standard of a third grader. I eventually just came up with the headcanon that offscreen the twins and their friend must’ve gone to Kinko’s and used their allowance to print off a giant poster of their dad, which they then pasted on the billboard along with their message. I was the kind of kid who needed an explanation, and this guess put my mind at ease… at least for 20 or so years.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, while I was drafting the question that mentioned “Billboard Dad.” I came across the trailer, so I obviously had to watch. I was absolutely shocked when, at 17 seconds in, this was the billboard that came on screen.

I couldn’t believe my eyes! A different billboard? That looks like actual 12-year-olds painted it? And even some clever wordplay, changing “YOUR AD HERE” to “OUR DAD HERE”? The twins didn’t get a poster printed at Kinko’s at all! The movie editors robbed me of billboard vandalism that made sense! Clearly the filmmakers decided to superimpose a different (worse) billboard somewhere between the trailer release and the movie release.

“The ad looks different in the movie” reads one YouTube comment. I’ve scoured the internet and that’s the only instance I could find of anyone else noticing the difference. Am I really the only one freaking out about this? Probably.

So, I did what all good internet users do: turn to Reddit. I posted my revelations on the Mary-Kate and Ashley subreddit, and here’s some theories one user had:

“They don’t want to promote graffiti in a kids movie. In the OG ad it looks like they drew over existing text”
“The new font looks more clear, especially with the all white background. The red text is kinda distracting in the original and it’s wouldn’t have been easy to read on a small TV 90s screen”
“The real photo of the dad is more eye catching (but impossible to have been painted using blue paint)”

Unfortunately I can’t know for sure, but I could see any of these possibly being the case. Maybe someday I’ll track down the contact information of someone who worked on the movie, but that will be another Know-It-All for another Friday.

I’ll leave you with some fun “Billboard Dad” tidbits that aren’t mysteries plaguing me:

A 13-year-old Troian Bellisario (that’s Spencer from “Pretty Little Liars”) makes a brief appearance as the twins’ friend.
Billboard Dad’s love interest is played by Jessica Tuck, who other people my age may recognize as Ryan and Sharpay’s mom in the “High School Musical” franchise.
Twink Caplan, or Miss Geist from “Clueless,” also makes a brief appearance as a woman interested in Billboard Dad.

That’s all there is to know today… for now.