Let's talk dirty

I bumped into MPAA big cheese Dan Glickman at a party after the wedding of my wife's cousin. Being an atheist teetotaler, I'm not much for weddings or parties but, to carny trash, free food is free food. The Motion Pictures Assn. of America president is a close friend of the bride's dad, so there we were, screaming pleasantries over a wedding combo with a cello playing rocking Dave Matthews covers. No one disagrees with my hatred of wedding rock cover bands with electric cellos, so let's move on to anonymous unelected ratings boards -- like the MPAA -- which I'm just as annoyed by.

Dan (I can call him that; we're kinda sorta family), had heard about our little movie "The Aristocrats." We're releasing it later this month, but we decided not to get it rated by the MPAA. It's being presented unrated to the great American public. Our preview is rated, and it got a "G," for golly gosh -- but the movie ain't rated nothing. It's got no piece of paper from the freakin' man. The man can pay like everyone else.

Here's why we didn't get it rated. We made the movie exactly the way we wanted to -- the comedian Paul Provenza and me, a few dozen of our famous friends, some consumer cameras, a computer and some editing software. No studio, no nothing. We didn't get a rating for the simple reason that we didn't ask for one. We saved the fee, the postage (and the possible bootlegging) of sending off the DVD to the powers that be. We're just putting it out, like free Americans. Find a need and fill it. We think America needs superstars talking filthy dirty and laughing about it. The invisible hand of the marketplace will have the only voice.

If you want to see 105 comedians riffing on the same filthy joke, see it. But if any word has ever offended you (just the word, not the idea or the context), you can be sure that ever-so-bad word is in our movie -- so stay the heck away. If the F-word, C-word, L-word, G-word, or E-word (I'm just making them up now), has ever bugged you, oh, fudge, you are not going to like this movie. It's a motherhubbard! We don't want to offend anyone; we want to make people laugh -- and if you don't laugh at scatological words and street-corner descriptions of sexual perversity, why don't you go see "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" instead. The studios need your money more than we do. We've got less riding on our movie. Provenza and I aren't desperate. The two of us don't need to have to deny our phony torrid off-screen romance in the tabloids just to advertise our movie. If this is a movie you want to see, someone will tell you about it.