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DIRTY JOKE
Penn gets mighty over flick’s success
BY PETER KEOUGH

Incest, coprophagy, bestiality, even felching — it’s all in The Aristocrats, Paul Provenza’s documentary about the world’s filthiest joke. And people are into it.

"I think we have the highest [revenue] per screen in history. It’s doubled Star Wars," says Penn Jillette, who co-produced and appears in The Aristocrats and who is perhaps best known as the larger and more loquacious half of the comedy/magic act Penn and Teller. "We’re on nine screens by now [averaging $60,000 per screen], and it’s still doing fabulously and selling out. But still, it’s a small movie for a group of people who just love the idea of comedy.... We made it for our friends, and it’s doing much better than we expected."

Has Jillette thought at all about the reason why people laugh hysterically when they hear George Carlin, for example, describe defecating in his wife’s mouth? Is it the cathartic effect of delving into the id?

"Oh, I don’t know," says Jillette. "The argument on freedom of speech always goes to those who say it inspires and those who say it’s cathartic. I think it’s a very different thing. I don’t think it gets out thoughts we have about raping our children. These people in the movie are our friends, people that I respect and love, and ‘love’ is the exact right word. One of the things that I’ve said in interviews that keeps coming back to me is that I can’t think of another movie with no violence, no hostility, and no conflict: there’s nothing. It’s just people laughing and loving each other. No one means any harm. It’s all done out of making people laugh and out of a good time. So I don’t know about cathartic. I don’t know if you’re really experiencing any negative things to kind of work through. Oedipus Rex may be cathartic, but this is just funny."

Is there anything that Jillette would consider as crossing the line of acceptability? Is there any movie that he would walk out of because it violated his standards of decency?

"I walked out on Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood thing," he says. "And I wanted to walk out of Lord of the Rings, but I was at the opening, so I guess social pressure stopped me."

The Aristocrats premieres Friday at the Kendall Square Cinema and Boston Common. See the review by Chris Wangler on page 6 of Arts + Entertainment.


Issue Date: August 12 - 18, 2005
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