How Censorship Broke Hollywood’s Funny Bone
By Nat Segaloff

American movie comedies were never known for intellectual ambitions, but once in a while a Ninotchka (1939), Modern Times (1936) or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) arrived with something to say as well as laugh at. Quite a feat, given the hovering presence of censorship.

FIRST AMENDMENT BLUES

A look at the private files of the Production Code Administration — Hollywood’s official censorship office — reveals that some of classic movies’ best material never reached the screen [see sidebars].

That began to change in 1952 when the U.S. Supreme Court (in Jacobellis vs. Ohio) ruled that motion pictures were covered by the First Amendment. By 1968 the old Code had made way for the present Rating System. Today free speech is being shouted all over the screen — but what’s it saying?

If modern comedies are any indication, not much. Such hits as Road Trip, The Benchwarmers, Scary Movie 1-2-3-4, Old School — while entertaining — are largely foul of mouth but empty of mind. In fact, their humor is downright puerile. Aren’t gross-out movies capable of anything loftier than a fart?

“I don’t think so,” sighs Larry Gelbart, the award-winning writer of Tootsie and TV’s “MASH.” Both were celebrated for touching the conscience as well as the funny bone. Alas, Gelbart adds, “The success of the American Pie's, Jim Carrey’s early films and a film with ‘Fockers’ in the title have definitely had an effect on willingness to finance pictures of some other forms of humor.”

Bud Yorkin, who directed the cult classic Start the Revolution Without Me and co-produced the groundbreaking TV series “All in the Family,” shares Gelbart’s cynicism. “You can do a double-entendre and it’s a cheap way to get a big laugh,” he says. “I don’t know how you can turn that around and try to say something or do something that has some degree of intelligence breathed into it.” Indeed, when Adam Sandler remade Mr. Deeds Goes to Town in 2002, he was careful to add “language and some sexual reference, including rear nudity” (per its PG-13 rating) to make it more appealing. In other words, he covered his ass by un-covering somebody else’s.

PUBLIC PEER PRESSURE

In a way, this makes sense. Given the 19-year-old audience that buys most tickets, major studios pander to what they think this target market wants: action, vulgarity, anti-authoritarianism, butts, boobs, boogers, barf and any other bodily fluid or function not specifically involved in procreation.

The irony is that, now that today’s comic filmmakers are free to say anything, they seldom do. Call it “irrelevant irreverence” — much ado about nothing — and it may be getting worse, as if there’s a penalty for making a movie that might possibly be " about" anything.

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