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December 01, 2006
To motherf--ker what Citizen Kane was to deep focus: f--kin' Geoff Pevere
"Among the many achievements credited to Robert Altman on the occasion of his passing last week, one milestone went largely unnoticed," writes Geoff Pevere in Toronto Star, until, that is, it was restored to posterity in Steve Anderson's documentary Fuck... 
"As it turns out, it was Altman who first slid the f-word past... a Hollywood studio. The movie was M*A*S*H and the context was that movie's climactic anything-goes... Looking an opponent square in the eye prior to the hike, John Schuck's character announces: "All right bub. Your fuckin' head is coming right off." ... If one can describe it so, the um, magic of the word lies in the fact that no matter how often it's used it still provokes a response. (It's also astoundingly versatile, the linguistic version of ketchup or duct tape.) ... [T]he f-word may well be one of the few things in mass marketed consumer culture that actually isn't compromised by overuse. To test the theory, try this: call up your mom, let it rip and see how blasé she is about it... [T]here's also something to be said for the fact that Jack Nicholson could and did say the word as frequently, creatively and forcefully as he did in a movie like The Last Detail. (Which was to the word "motherfucker" what Citizen Kane was to deep focus.) [More at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at December 1, 2006 12:36 PM
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