New York Dispatch.

A film called Fuck at the CMJ Film Festival in New York, along with Borat and Stranger than Fiction. What's not to like, especially since the film's title is also its subject.

I suppose that the very existence of a film entitled Fuck about the word "fuck" is a phenomenon in and of itself. It forces you to consider how far we've come (the strides that we've made, as the cliché goes) from the time, not so long ago, when this word, whose taboo status gave the film a reason to be made, was actually a taboo. As I recall, "fuck" used to be the one word that could always get you into trouble as a teenager - funny how adolescence comes to mind whenever the word "fuck" comes up.

Updated through 11/11.

And it's not just that Americans or even Anglophones are such prudes. When the film Woodstock was first shown and immediately subtitled for world consumption, I can remember seeing it in France. There's a memorable moment when David Crosby looks out from the stage at the crowds that have assembled as far as he can see, and says, "Far fucking out." The French translation is "c'est tres interessant." ("It's very interesting.") I'll let my French friends explain how the subtitle folks were dealing with taboos here.

I'm sure this has been said plenty of times, but it's best to think of Fuck, directed by Steve Anderson, as The Aristocrats II, except that here we simply have reflections from celebrities, conservative would-be guardians of culture (pop and otherwise), a porno star or two (people who fuck for a living, so don't fuck with them) and a few linguistic scholars - not-so-cunning linguists who admit that they can't explain the origin of the word.

Minus its subject and the wonderfully inventive animated sections that punctuate the observations of its talking heads, Fuck could have been made for PBS. Who knows? Maybe in a push for edginess, the documentary will show there.

Let's look at The Aristocrats again for a moment. The film is built on the inherent rivalry among comedians to tell the same dirty joke better than anyone else. (In the business, that means telling the joke better than the guy who was on stage before you. Given the joke in the film, which I won't ruin for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's literally a fuck-fest.) And then there's the film's message for the ages - that the drama (and even the truth) of a story is in the telling. If you think that's obvious, think of it again the next time you're bored by a movie, a political speech, or anything else.

Yet Fuck has its moments, especially provided by the conservatives who are asked to reflect on the toll that the liberal use of the word "fuck" has inflicted on society. Dennis Prager, the talk show host, links it to a general decline in civility and civilization. From Alan Keyes, the prodigious orator and one-time Republican presidential candidate, we're advised (really warned) that words do indeed have meaning, and that the use by reflex of "fuck" reflects a retreat from a carefully considered use of language. We've heard this before, of course, and Keyes is right, but "fuck" is far from the only word that can help illustrate the problem that he's identifying.

And then there's Pat Boone - who knows where they found this prehistoric pop icon, or why he agreed to talk to the filmmakers. Remember that Boone was present long ago in a helicopter with Republican president Gerald Ford's agriculture secretary Earl Butz, when Butz declared - for eternity, it turned out - that all that Blacks ever aspired to were "tight pussy, loose shoes, and a warm place to shit." I guess Boone is a man who still knows his obscenity. In the film, Boone is the kind of guy who reminds you of your high school teachers - back to adolescence again - who tell you that people like the rest of us who use the word "fuck" do so because they lack the imagination to say anything more imaginative. That's an old saw, but here Boone sets himself apart from his conservative brethren with a novel idea. For the word "fuck," he suggests substituting his own name - "Boone!" - for an exclamation, and encourages others to do the same. Somehow I don't think it will catch on. Is he Boone-ing with us?

There no crescendo, no orgasmic release in Fuck, which suggests the broader truth that the mere utterance of obscene words is like so much else in society, i.e., it isn't what it used to be. Remember the telling scene in Louis Malle's underappreciated drama, Le Souffle au Coeur (Murmur of the Heart), about a kid who literally does fuck his mother? Schoolboys are getting together, planning mischief, and one of them suggests something sacrilegious. Our young hero's modern response is, "No, blasphemy doesn't interest me any more." You can say the same thing about Fuck, unless if you're submitting something to the ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America. Then you really do have to turn the clock back. See Kirby Dick's wryly entertaining This Film Is Not Yet Rated for its clever riff on "fuck" and its implications for ratings.

Ultimately, Fuck is trivial. There are lots of dirtier words - "Iraq" and "Bush" are two of them. Let's keep track of who is fucking whom here.

Update, 11/9: IndieWIRE interviews Steve Anderson.

Updates, 11/11: AO Scott: "Mr Anderson's movie is staged as a talking-head culture-war skirmish between embattled upholders of propriety (or repression, if you prefer) and proponents of free expression (or filth), but its real lesson is that the two sides depend upon each other."

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: "[I]t's essentially a mishmash of random ingredients, not very systematically presented and skewed to flatter its audience's presumed enlightenment. Steven Bochco, Chuck D and Janeane Garofalo are in favor of 'fuck.' Alan Keyes and Pat Boone are against it. What else do you need to know?"

"[T]hink of it as the history lesson most educators lack the cojones to propose," suggests Eric Kohn in the New York Press.

Dan Persons interviews Anderson for IFC News.

Posted by dwhudson at November 6, 2006 8:15 AM