Steve Fuckin’ A: The Interview

The following interview is pretty fucking long, so I’ll just cut to the motherfucking chase. Steve Anderson has directed a film called, well, it’s a pretty fucked-up word so I’m not gonna go there, but I will say that it’s a documentary about a word that raises a fuckload of issues. I caught up with Anderson after a fan-fucking-tastic screening at the Philly Film Fest, and here’s what the talented fucker had to say. (I could try to pad this with pull quotes and photos but, you know what? Fuck that.)

David Dylan Thomas: You’ve got Fuck. You’ve got This Film Is Not Yet Rated. You’ve got The Aristocrats, and all these documentaries dealing with free speech. Do you think there’s something in the water?

Steve Anderson: That’s a really good question. I think all the filmmakers of, obviously, my film and This Film Is Not Yet Rated, and The Aristocrats – none of us knew about the other films when we were making them. I heard about The Aristocrats after we’d finished shooting and This Film Is Not Yet Rated just a few months ago. I think there is something to be said for that with the current administration in the White House, some of the religious right, certainly in the past few years, and especially their effects on the FCC and all these fines being levied; I think that artists feel the need to speak out again.

I mean we’re all inspired by people like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and as you look back in history some of those people had to stand up and say something. And I don’t want to equate myself with them, obviously, they’re heroes and icons, but I think it’s a time to speak out now. And we always have to debate free speech; otherwise it stands that it could be taken away.

DDT: Let’s talk about the FCC for a minute. One of the things you mentioned at the festival had to do with the idea of context and how that influences dirty words and that you didn’t really think it was a good idea necessarily for the FCC to be the ones determining context. Could you explain that a little more?

SA: Yeah, I’m personally somewhat troubled by the FCC determining all their rulings, and their rulings, mind you, are based on public complaints. So someone needs to complain, the FCC then goes into a little locked room and they contemplate whether based on context, the word or the situation was obscene or needs to be fined. And I find that troubling because it’s essentially a bunch of people in suits in Washington.

They’re not elected . They’re not judges. And they rule and fine based on their opinions. As much as I want freedom of speech to be out there, I think I’d prefer it to be a law that you can’t say “fuck” on television during a certain time, and here’s why: Because then, if I chose to break that law, I’d know I’d be breaking a law, but then I would be able to have it ruled on in a court of law and if need be take it to the Supreme Court, if it went that far.

And that way it’s written into law and it’s not ruled on by a little cabal of people in Washington. And they don’t have any more experience than you or I do. They come from different backgrounds. They’re not specialists. They’re not linguists. They’re not artists. They’re basically people in suits moving up the ladder in some fashion and I’m just troubled by the fact that the FCC rules on context. Oddly enough, I would personally rather it be a law and a law that could be challenged because now they make it very difficult for any rulings to be challenged.

DDT: It’s interesting you mention linguists. One of the things I really liked about the film was that you brought academia to the table. How did you go about choosing the professors or the experts that you had?

SA: Well I obviously wanted to go after some of the top people in the country. Geoffrey Nunberg is a top linguist at Stanford, but he’s also a commentator on NPR. He does a [feature] on “Fresh Air” and he’s [a] very well spoken, very smart guy. He’s also the usage editor of the Random House Dictionary. I figured that’s a pretty good place to start.

Jesse Sheidlower I first came across in that he’s an editor of the book called The F-Word that’s kind of like an encyclopedia of the word “fuck” and it just uses every different use. It charts way back, to the beginning of time almost, the first times it was used. And as it turns out he’s the American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. So he’s a pretty smart guy, too.

And then Dr. Reinhold Aman, he’s quite a character. He’s a very smart guy but he’s also the editor of a journal that he puts together called Maledicta that scholars all over the world who’ve written on dirty language or obscene language submit articles to him and he publishes it on a yearly basis. So I thought right off that those three were a pretty good start.

Timothy Jay is another one. He’s a professor in Massachusetts who studies obscene language. Written a couple of books called Cursing in America and stuff like that so I really sort of wanted to cover that area because it is a word at the start of it all. It’s a word like any other word, but it’s a word that somehow has become obscene.

It’s four letters. They have to be in that order. So it’s very interesting in that fashion and what brought me to the project first of all was this one simple word (and I’m a writer and have a love of language) can cause so [many] opinions out there. So many people have an opinion about this word.

DDT: Talking about those opinions, I think I brought this up at the Q&A session, this idea of the “prudes” and the “profaners” and that they need each other. That if suddenly one stopped being offended or the other stopped deciding to offend that the whole thing would fall apart. “Fuck” would lose its power.

SA: Yeah, I think it’s true. As I was going along making the film one thing that struck me is it really is democracy in action. If either side, the prudes or the profaners, or the conservatives or the liberals, completely had their way, we’d have a completely different country either way. We can all fear the conservatives, but if the country was completely liberal, that’d be kind of creepy, too.

I think that they really balance each other out, especially over this word and the issues of free speech. It’s something we need to debate. And I think at some point the profaners will take a few steps too far forward and that’s what brings the prudes back. Pat Boone and Alan Keyes and the people on the religious right step up and say “Hey! You guys are going too far!” And that’s what this is all about.

I don’t necessarily think that “fuck” should be on network television or on the radio but I do think that it merits a discussion [on] what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. That’s what I hope to bring across in the film. I didn’t want it to be a polemic that we should just have dirty language everywhere. But it is a factor in our society that there is obscene language. It’s on television. It’s everywhere. It’s in politics and it shows in the film and music, popular culture. You hear it on the street almost every day.

I’m consistently amused now. I can walk down the street in New York or any major city and it sounds like people are just blurting out the name of my film everywhere. It really does merit a discussion. I think there is the prude and the profaners and the give and take and I think that’s what’s important about the film, that either side in this film gets their say (and you could come down on either side, obviously). The film definitely tilts to the left. I’ll be the first to admit that given my opinions on the subject. But I felt it was really important to include the conservative point of view as well.

DDT: About your commentators, I notice that you have a good deal of diversity, not just of opinion, but cultural diversity as well. Do you think that race, culture, influences how we look at language?

SA: That’s a good question. I think it does. I think all these things factor in. Race factors in to a certain degree. I think different parts of the country certainly filter in to how we look at it. Major cities you’re much more likely to hear it on the street than you are in the town square somewhere in Oklahoma. But I think people use it everywhere. I think a word like “fuck” kind of transcends race. It transcends conservative or liberal. It really is kind of everywhere and people have to deal with it whether they like it or not.

I don’t think that race particularly plays a role in it in that every race to a certain degree uses it. It’s pointed out that it’s pushed into society a little more by hip hop, or it’s pushed out into society by HBO, but I find it hard to single one of those out as a determining factor because you really do hear a word like “fuck” everywhere. You hear it on the street. You hear it in the movies. You don’t hear it in church, maybe. But maybe there oughtta be one place where you don’t hear it.

DDT: I find it interesting that your first film was a fictional film, not a documentary. Was it strange making the transition?

SA: The first film was called The Big Empty. It had Jon Favreau and Daryl Hannah and Kelsey Grammer, and a bunch of other really great actors. I had actually started in the documentary world. I was a cameraman for many years. Actually shot seven national documentaries for PBS as a cameraman, one of which won a Peabody Award. So, I was really comfortable in that venue and I’ve always wanted, anyways, to look at myself as a filmmaker that can do any number of genres or different types of filmmaking.

After The Big Empty, I literally had said a couple times as a joke, “We should make a documentary about the word ‘fuck’.” And I always got a laugh and a snicker out of it, but the more I thought about it, [the more I thought] it would really be a good idea. From a filmmaking perspective, you get to use different parts of your brain, different tools, but in the end it really is the kind of film that I like to make, that’s entertaining, makes people laugh, but also makes people think at the end of it. You walk out of the theater and you’re having some discussions about it.

The Big Empty’s a lot like that as well, in its own way. They were related, but I really enjoyed both and I hope to continue on doing both for the rest of whatever career I hope to have.

DDT: What did you learn that surprised you the most in making this film?

SA: That’s a good question. One thing I think I really did learn is that it may not come as a surprise but when I started this I was told by many people and even myself believed it, that “fuck” had somehow lost its power because it’s everywhere now. It’s on television. It’s in the movies. But what I really learned is that it really does retain its power. It might still be out there more, but in a way I think that might make it even a little bit more powerful because it forces people to deal with it, where back in the 40’s and 50’s and 60’s, it was there but people didn’t have to deal with it all the time. Now we have to deal with it and we have to have opinions about it and when is it appropriate.

And I could call up Ron Jeremy and say, “Hey, we’re doing a documentary about the word ‘fuck’,” and say it right out loud and no problem and we discuss it. But if I call Pat Boone, I couldn’t say the word. I’d have to say, “We’re doing a movie about the F-word.” He understood it the same way, but you have to really be careful about who you’re talking to because it really does have this power to offend people. And it’s not just the word that’s offending people, it’s you offending them, and it can have a real stigma attached to it. And I was really kind of surprised over the course of the film how much power the word still retained. In fact, in weird ways I think it might be even more powerful than it was.

DDT: I know from my own experience how difficult it can be just to get the license for music in a movie. You actually have full-on scenes, clips in your film. How did you get those?

SA: Honestly, when you’re putting the film together you don’t think about it too much. You have to understand that all that stuff’s gonna cost money, that it’s gonna take licensing, and there’s a lot of paperwork involved . So we’re in the process. We’ve cleared well over half of the clips and all the music’s not going to be a problem. Music is a little less complicated than film clips. But we’re in the process and honestly we’ve had very few people refuse or very few studios refuse.

I feel like we’re in really good shape because when they hear about the film and the context of the film, it’s important to the studios as well, and TV stations. I mean, First Amendment allows them to put the product out there and I think that they’re really getting behind the film and the spirit of the film. It costs money, mind you. It’s not a documentary that we made for $20,000. It’s very low budget, but from the very beginning we budgeted over half our budget to pay for clips and music. We were smart about it from the start.

It’s a pain in the ass, that’s for sure. Beginning to deal with all the paperwork and all the different clearance departments here and there. And you have to clear everything, not just music but film clips and photographs and clips from archives and news things and signed releases, including the people on the street. There’s shots in the movie where we talked to maybe 20, 30 people on the street. Well, we probably talked to 300 over the course of the filming and we have everyone’s release cos’ at the time you don’t know who you’re gonna use so you gotta [have them] sign releases. It’s not easy. It’s not the funnest part of the filmmaking process, but it’s a necessary part. You have to get it done.

DDT: How did Bill Plympton become involved?

SA: I’ve always been a big fan of Bill. We’ve been considering, obviously, using some animation for different segments and some of the sort of interstitial parts that introduce each chapter and one day one of the other executive producers, Gregg Daniel, said, “What about Bill?” and I said, “That’s a brilliant idea.” I can’t remember, honestly, how he got it. He got his phone number or maybe his e-mail address, which I think might be on his site, like an info address? And I e-mailed him and he responded back and I told him what we were doing and he just really took to it.

It’s his kind of thing. He’s always been a little bit out there. He does great animation, but it’s not Walt Disney animation. He does animation for adults and so it was a real perfect fit. We enjoyed working together. He’s a great guy. He brought a lot of his own ideas to the process. For me that was great, just to be able to be involved with someone of that caliber. It was a really good match.

DDT: Drew Carey, who’s one of the few outed Republicans in Hollywood, I find it interesting that he’s in The Aristocrats to a great deal and he’s also in your film and is very gung ho about the word “fuck.” Did that surprise you?

SA: I had heard this “outed Republican” thing although I didn’t ask him about that. I didn’t dwell [on] that, or I didn’t question him about that when we went in there. Some of his comments during the interview kind of tilted in that direction, but I don’t know if he is an outed Republican or not. I assume based on your question that it’s written about and out there. But he’s a comedian. He’s very funny.

If he is a Republican conservative, I think he’s one of the good ones. He understands that there are different opinions on these kind of subjects. You don’t have to follow the company line so to speak. I’m not a Republican by any stretch, but I’m not a Democrat, either. I’m registered independent. I don’t vote down party lines, but I vote on issues. I’m probably a little bit more conservative than you might think given the fact that I directed a film called Fuck.

But Drew is very funny, very gracious with his time, loved the fact that he got to talk about this. We saw him in The Aristocrats, but in our film I enjoy the fact that we have some different people in there. There’s a few people that might be expected – Bill Maher, Jeanine Garofalo – but it’s not often that you can see Miss Manners and Ron Jeremy in the same film, or Hunter S. Thompson and Alan Keyes.

And so we have a great sort of cross-section of different opinions and people that you don’t often or ordinarily see in a film like this. And I think that people respond to that. There’s new faces that keep coming up. Sam Donaldson, Ben Bradlee. Some really cool people, very intelligent people, with something to say that have been a part of popular culture for so many years and I think that’s really one of the things that keeps the film fresh for an audience. That they keep seeing new faces and they keep being surprised by these new faces.

DDT: I was very surprised at how enthusiastic Sam Donaldson got.

SA: Yeah. He was a trip. He was a lot of fun. We sat down for about fifteen minutes. He was a little unsure about doing it when I talked to him on the phone but I had fortunately just got off the phone with Ben Bradlee who had agreed to do it. So when Sam, who really respects Ben Bradlee, [heard that, he] said sure and I said, “Look let’s just sit down.” And, you know, he’s Sam Donaldson, that’s the way he talks.

He’s very effusive and {in a dead-on Donaldson impersonation} “talks like Sam Donaldson and everything’s very enunciated.” He never said the word during the interview, but copped, obviously, to using it now and again and gave some very funny answers to everything. He’s a very funny guy. He’s a very smart guy. Been around Washington a long time, obviously. Has a lot of opinions. Knows where a lot of the bodies are buried.

And I’d always been a big fan of his. Whenever you see him on TV, it’s hard to turn away. He’s just got one of those personalities you like to listen to, like to watch. It was real fun interviewing him, for sure.

DDT: I wanna go back for a sec to the prudes vs. the profaners. The reason that this keeps going, that neither really just gives up and says, “I don’t care about fuck anymore.” What if it’s that for some reason we need to be offended or we need to offend? That there’s some sort of drive. I’m thinking of the fact that Rush Limbaugh’s audience is made up of, a lot of them, of Democrats who hate what he has to say but tune in anyway. That that satisfies something. Do you think there’s anything to that?

SA: Yeah, I think in regards to the prudes and the profaners, we’re a country that was founded on the principle of free speech. That we all have the right to have an opinion and that our opinions matter. If everyone agreed with your opinion, it wouldn’t be very interesting. And so I think that people like to get into debates with people who have different points of view because you want to test your own point of view. You want to try to sway them. You want to try to make them see what you’re feeling. Perhaps change their mind.

If we had a country where everyone agreed, it would just be like a science fiction movie from the 60’s or something. You keep pushing it until you get pushed back, and that’s where the test begins, and you say, “Oh yeah? Here’s what I believe,” and you debate the other side. I think that’s what news, especially news channels, Fox News and CNN, who I worked for for a long time, that’s what they’ve become.

There’s very little actual news on those channels anymore, unless it’s a breaking news story, like 9/11. What they’ve become is a network of pundits espousing their views back and forth to one another. It’s a little tiring. I’ll be the first to say that. Back and forth you get to hear one side or the other. It’s kind of fun for filmmakers to come in underneath that and give audiences a little bit more.

If this was on CNN, something about the F-word, it’d be two or three minutes long, and then it’s on [to] Natalee Holloway or whatever the next thing is. At least with a film like Fuck or This Film Is Not Yet Rated, they’re extended stories about situations like these, or positions like these. People seem to want more than they’re getting from the news, from the newspaper. And they sit down and number one – they’re entertained, number two – they get something to think about, number three – at the end of the screenings, they get to talk about it: “What’s your opinion?” “Here’s what I think about ‘fuck’.”

It’s really funny, but people love to say ‘fuck’ in the Q & A’s. Once they’ve gotten done with this movie they’re like “What the fuck was your budget?” or “Who gave you this fuckin’ idea?” One of the great things about the movie, actually, is that it gives people license to say ‘fuck’ and to talk about ‘fuck’ and debate ‘fuck’ without feeling like they’re being obscene.

And that’s one of the things I really hoped for was that the movie, at least in the context of the film itself and the media, in the conversation, you could talk about that language, you can say the word with your friends or whoever you’re arguing with and it does, for the moment anyway, take away some of the stigma attached to the word and you can maybe move forward a little bit. I don’t think this film is going to solve the fuck problem that’s always been around but at least for the time being it removes a little bit of the stigma, people can talk about it and debate what it means. Should it be on the air? Should it not be on the air? Should fines be levied by the FCC? And really debate some of the issues that relate to “fuck” and to free speech and if they can laugh along the way, I think that’s a good thing.

DDT: What is your personal favorite variation on the word ‘fuck’?

SA: That’s a really hard one. It’s sort of like people who say you have to pick your favorite child. I’ve been sort of the conduit or the funnel that all things fuck have gone through for the past couple years. Friends of mine have sent me anything having to do with fuck that’s in the newspapers, on the web, to jokes. There’s just some words that I still think are funny like fucknut and fuckhole, that’s Kevin Smith’s favorite.

[I like] any one that is a little out there, thought it’s hard to surprise me with them now. I have to say I think my favorite is plain, old “fuck.” There’s all sorts of variations, but you can say “fuck” in so many different ways, in so many different contexts. I don’t swear half as much as I used to, I don’t think. Now that I’ve done the film, I hear myself every time I use it. I’m very sensitive to the fact of when I’m using it in a sentence.

But still, if I do something wrong or stub my toe, without thinking about it, the word that comes out is “Fuck!” And it’s just so deeply ingrained in my brain, in our collective brain. I think that it’s the one word that can express that moment best of all and for that I’m happy that we have it. It’s much better than saying, “Tomato!” or something like that. It really has an ability to let you release an emotion.

DDT: Thanks so much!