While we’re on the “gratuitous” theme, how about profanity put into a movie or some music just to kick the rating to a higher level, or get a “Parental Advisory” label?
The best example in this from a movie was “The Pursuit of Happyness” where Will Smith’s son dropped an F bomb just to give this otherwise PG-rated movie (for adult themes) a PG-13 rating so people would be more likely to see it.
And from music, the biggest one that comes to mind was from the hair band Warrant in the early days of labeling; they had a track called “Ode To Tipper Gore” that consisted entirely of profanity in an effort to get it stickered.
(I tried to start this thread yesterday, and got a 404 message instead.)
In a cutaway a man explains that in order for a movie to achieve an R-rating, the most popular MPAA rating, the film needs graphic violence, sex and nudity. This film has none of that so the producers have asked him “to take this opportunity to say ‘fuck you’.”
The garage shootout in “8 Million Ways To Die” with Jeff Bridges was immediately preceded by an incredible volley of profanity from the warring parties. At the time it was far and away the winner for most F*** YOU!s in a movie scene, and may never have been equaled.
I don’t know if I’d call it gratuitous, but Barbra Streisand’s “Do us a favor and just f*** off”, in The Owl And The Pussycat, was so totally unexpected that it made the scene most memorable. So I rented the DVD about 3 years ago only to find that Columbia removed that outburst. With the outburst removed, the following scene didn’t really make sense.
the Transformers animated movie worked in an “oh shit” which presumably helped it get a PG rating. The movie is cheez-ball now, but when we were 10 years old sitting in the theater we were like “he did not just say that!”
Midnight Run was heavily laced with profanity from beginning to end. I thought it was well into gratuitous territory.
But what do I know? Maybe it was a realistic portrayal of how those people talk. The movie was all about some mobsters, bail bondsmen, and competing skip-tracers. Maybe that’s normal everyday talk in those lines of work.
For the opposite, one use of “Fuck that!” was overdubbed (poorly and obviously) into “Screw that!” in Galaxy Quest, presumably to keep a PG rating, though I’m not sure why since I don’t think it was a movie with a lot of kiddie appeal, being an extended parody/homage of the original Star Trek.
I’m sure Gordon Ramsay is perfectly polite and capable of explaining things to even the most poorly trained kitchen hand / hotelier in an even-tempered non-sweary way. But, if he did that, it would expose the threadbare premise of his shows even more obviously. At least the swearing and the swearing right back generates ‘drama’.
So whaddya think, DCnDC? Is all that profanity really gratuitous, or do practitioners in those kinds of business really talk that way? I’m still wondering about that.
WAG: Not that I know any of these people IRL, but if one were to film some of these people for a week and edit all of the interesting parts together, I wouldn’t be surprised if it came back resembling scenes in that film. Still seems at least a bit exaggerated, though.