Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants: Live Free or Die Swearing

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Live Free or Die Swearing

"Yippee ~~kayeh~~ ki-yay*, motherfu-" said John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard, which I gleefully took in with Husband last night. (I don't fully understand it, but I adore Bruce Willis.) My mind, apparently, filled in the rest of the word because I was sure he said "motherfucker," just as he has in the previous three moves, always to my delight.

"Nope, he never said it," Husband explained. "They wanted a PG-13 rating, so he could not say 'motherfucker.'"

"Let me get this straight - McClane called people 'dickhead,' 'whore,' prostitute,' and other colorful phrases that I can't recall right now, but that is fine for a PG-13?"

"They say those things regularly on TV now," Husband replied.

"OK, but there are exploding helicopters, cars, and airplanes. People are run over by cars. Hundreds of people are shot. A guy gets mulched by gears. This is OK for a PG-13, but not the word 'motherfucker?'"

It seems so. Since I have long understood the ratings system to be utterly corrupt, I can't say that I am surprised by this. However, it does disappoint me that the producers of Live Free or Die Hard would cut McClane's trademark line in an effort to get an PG-13, not R rating. One of the reasons that I've always loved the Die Hard series is that there are no women characters who are in them just to look sex or have sex with McClane. Sure, there are generally no women in these movies at all, but that's also OK with me. Sometimes I just want to watch a ridiculous movie with shit being blown up and jokes being made and "yippee ~~kayeh~~ ki-yay motherfucker" being uttered. And the other movies did just fine with this formula. Why start pandering to the oddly prurient now? Bah.

* This is how Urban Dictionary spells it, so I'll go with them as an official version.

Labels: Asshole idiots, mortification, other rants, random

4 Comments:

At July 07, 2007 4:53 PM, ET said...: I think that is true.
You hear things like "blow me!"; "getting a stiff one"; "He screwed her"; and so on. Just about everything but the F word is on TV these days
At July 07, 2007 5:16 PM, Rebecca said...: Oh man. I finally understand what all those bus ads were about! I've been trying to figure out the yipee kayeh shit for weeks...

(By the way, that thought was rated PG-13. Had I said "the motherfucking yipee kayeh shit," automatic R. Had I said it as a male going down on another male, automatic NC-17. The MPAA is not only corrupt, they are sexist and homophobic.)
At July 07, 2007 6:09 PM, Liberal Homeschooler said...: Totally agree. You'd be amazed at all the MPAA crap.

I haven't seen it yet, but the documentary _This Film is Not Yet Rated_ (available from Netflix but NOT Blockbuster) deals exactly with this. It's on my queue.

LH
first time commenter - love your blog
At July 07, 2007 10:52 PM, DangerDoll said...: I read that they had to rework some of the script to keep it out of R territory. Once they slap an R on it, then they theoretically lose a market - I say theoretically because really now, when was the last time you saw an R film and there were NO unsupervised teenagers in the audience?

I really loved the first Die Hard (the two that followed were stinkers), but I heard that Willis refused to sign on for this installment until someone brought him the perfect script, one that was like the first movie. Also, I just love saying "Yippee ki yay, motherfucker!" a lot. Big surprise.