Day Six at the FFM: Wednesday, August 30th

Fuck. Steve Anderson. USA. 91 minutes. In English. A documentary of more than just the word Fuck, this film takes an American-centric historical look at the whole debate on obscenity in the U.S., particularly focusing on contemporary attacks on free speech on the radio, television, and in the movies. Anderson nicely juxtaposes the two camps fighting the war of words. On the pro-free speech side, anti-censorship side, there’s noted news broadcasters, comedians, writers/producers to popular musicians. On the pro-censorship side, there's conservative politicians, tv/radio talk show hosts, self-proclaimed defenders of “decency” and civilization, including the religious right, parents and “morality” focused lobbying groups. There’s also the requisite mini-bio on Lenny Bruce, since his trials and tribulations were central to the obscenity/free speech arguments in the U.S.). Make no mistake, this documentary is squarely in the pro-free speech camp, but tries to be light-hearted and comical about it. The censorship advocates are allowed full license to place both feet as far as possible in their mouths. I was expecting just a treatise on the word “Fuck”, but the film goes a lot further. Although, fuck is used at least 682 times, if I remember the statistic at the end. Fucking-fantabulous!