Reviewed by Stuart O'Connor
Featuring Hunter S Thompson, Tera Patrick, Bill Maher, Alanis Morisette, Kevin Smith,
Pat Boone, Billy Connolly, Sam Donaldson, Michael Medved, Chuck D, David Milch, Steven Bochco
UK certification 18 | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 93 minutes | Directed by Steve Anderson
"If you can't say 'fuck' you can't say 'fuck the government!' "
— Lenny Bruce
What we have here is a thoroughly entertaining four-year-old documentary about my favourite word. A word that I use every day, and probably use way too much – but I really don't give a fuck. If you don't like it, you can go and fuck yourself. As TV writer/producer Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue) says: "Nobody ever died from the word fuck." And that's pretty much the tack that this movie (which uses "fuck" 629 times) takes.
It's a provocative, forthright look at the word – where it comes from, who uses it and who tries to stop the rest of us using it. Filmmaker Steve Anderson puts together interviews with a bunch of interesting fuckers – including porn stars Tera Patrick and Ron Jeremy; comedians Janeane Garofalo, Billy Connolly, Bill Maher and Drew Carey; gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson; singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette; filmmaker Kevin Smith; and some cunning linguists – as well as a few conservative party-poopers to look at how the use of the word, and society's attitudes towards it, have changed over the years. There are plenty of interesting facts – such as that the first appearance of the word fuck in print was in 1475. Or that, contrary to popular belief, fuck is not an acronym – the most common misconception is that it means Fornication Under Consent of the King. In fact, nobody knows it's true origins.
Fuck is the most versatile word in the English language - it can be used as a noun, an adjective, a verb, an adverb, and all the various permutations thereof. And it wasn't until the two world wars that all those permutations came into being – before that, it was mainly used as a word for copulation. Fuck is a pretty thorough examination of the word, but it doesn't really reach any conclusion – except that some people like the word fuck, and some people don't, and conservatives are generally a bunch of prissy little fuckers. And I already knew that.
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