3-4 July 1999

6. Posting Guard: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is stirring things up already. Of course, the biggest issue is about kids getting in to see this raunchy musical epic. The New York Post jumped right into the breach and sent three underage teens to eight theaters in the New York area. They got into five of eight, including a few where they were asked for ID, gave real I.D. that indicated that they were under 17, and got tickets anyway. Funny. My experience seeing the film on Thursday afternoon with two friends well over 17 was stunning. Not only did we have ushers enter the theater (a rare commodity these days), but they actually 86ed four kids who were under 17 and without parents. Wow! Gotta give it up for the AMC Century 14. They were doing their jobs. But that leads to the next button.

5. Smaller, Shorter & Sold Out: I got an e-mail a couple of days ago about Marcus Theatres and their plans for South Park. It went like this: "Marcus is trying to, for whatever reason, kill the movie. All theatres in the chain received a memo from the corporate office saying that South Park must play on the theatre's smallest screen and may not be moved to a larger theatre for any reason. Why are they doing this when a movie like Instinct is still in a 200 seat theatre and only selling, at most, 10 tickets a show? I haven't got a clue....well, actually, that isn't true. Many of us surmise that our corporate office doesn't want the hassle of dealing with idiot parents trying to take their kids to see this movie, under the idiotic assumption that Animation equals Kids Movie." Now, sure enough, when I get to the AMC, South Park is on one of the smallest screens there too. To be fair, it was also playing on one of the larger screens (watching the ushers work a bigger crowd would be fascinating). But here is a movie that opened Wednesday with the highest per-screen average among wide releases in America. Wild Wild West and Big Daddy were the only films that came close and, to be fair, those films took up 6 screens at the AMC I was at. But still.

4. Dreh, Oh Dreh Does He Bug Me So?: Of course, leave it to Rod Dreher at the New York Post to rile me up in defense of the film. He wrote a piece on South Park that questions whether, well, here: " But even if no one under 17 sees the picture, it's still troubling, even as an adults-only comedy. As with the comparatively harmless Big Daddy, the comic premise of South Park is based on the hilarity ensuing from the corruption of children." And then it occurred to me! This writer isn't the vicious hypemaster trying to build his career by ripping down Stanley Kubrick and by twisting Fredrick Raphael's reporting of his relationship with Kubrick into a pretzel of false truths. The guy is just a crank! He reads a fascinating story that gave a little insight into the mind of a real artist and all he could see was a self-hating Jew. Now, he sees South Park and decides that an adult who thought that the film had "a good message" was unable to see that it was really a "cynical joke." For all of its near-obscene material - and an NC-17 would not be unwarranted, as corrupted as that rating is - South Park is a remarkable piece of satire that understands the stupidity and worthlessness of censorship. Dreher also misrepresents the thoughts of Parker and Stone by writing, "The filmmakers can legitimately claim that South Park is meant for adult audiences, and can hide behind the shield of the R rating. That's very disingenuous, especially considering that the movie's plot has to do with the South Park kids sneaking into a profane R-rated film and learning interesting new ways to swear from it."

Here are some quotes from my live Yahoo! Chat with Trey Parker on Monday. On whether he'd let a child of his watch the TV series: "I would let them watch the show. When I was a kid I watched Monty Python from the time I was seven years old and it didn't hurt me." On his feelings about his movie not being an NC-17: " It should be a parents' decision, not some committee. And NC-17 is a rating that says even if you think your child is mature enough to see this film, you still can't take him. And Matt and I are big opponents of undercutting people's freedom." And finally, his response to the question, "How do you feel knowing that parents totally disagree to the movies you make?" "I think it's fine, I think it's a parents' choice. Parents have that choice to decide that my movies suck. But the government or a committee should not have the power to decide whether or not my movies can be made." Doesn't sound like he's hiding behind a rating to me. Sounds like he wants parents to take responsibility for their kids and doesn't think that children are quite as fragile as Mr. Dreher. Adults either. If Rod Dreher's sense of decency is what's going to protect me, dear God, please let me die in my sleep tonight. I'm not saying that every concern he has is unfair, but he has a way of going overboard that would make for some intense dinner conversation if he ever sat down with me face to face. (You can read his rather remarkable editorial, run in the Entertainment section, by clicking here. And just to prove I don't think R.D. is all bad, I do agree with him in his praise of Om Puri, the great actor currently in theaters as the star of My Son, The Fanatic.

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