Thursday, January 08, 2009

A litany of filth...

Ken Levine: "On MASH it was routine that we’d get a memo from S&P [CBS Standards and Practices] saying “cut the casual profanity in half”. Whether we had four “hells” or “damns” or eight, we’d get the same directive. So of course we’d start padding our scripts with double the casual profanity in order to keep the ones we needed."

Which is an approach I use when penning theatre scripts. Most recently, in an effort to shock and, thus, squeeze a few profanities through the net, I introduced some rather outrageous scatology. "We're not keen on that scene," I was told. Rather expectedly. My how I laughed, as I realised that my distraction may have worked because those rude words that littered the script were never mentioned. Although no doubt by the next draft they will be. For once, with this draft, I opted not to throw in any instances of a certain word that begins with C. The shit eating was enough, I thought.

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