Pixar’s Up Predicted to Break All Time Records at the Box Office—Provided it Stears Clear of “Potty Humor,” Which Intelligent Folks Find Insulting
If this is devoid of crass “potty” talk, it will make a killing at the box office. Of note, I use an article from Gary North to help voice a common sentiment I believe shared by vast throngs of people throughout the nation.
John Lassiter seems to be a guy, for some reason, in control enough of film content to have not included in past Pixar films, vulgar or even shady innuendo nor potty humor.
Hollywood pretends to excuse the trash it dishes out and its never ending morally vile content claiming “we give the movie going public what they want,” but that is a lie, and they know it is a lie. Until the mid ’90’s, with Titanic, the all-time top 50 grossing films, adjusted for inflation, were all considered “family friendly,” or PG. Hollywood, as one BYU professor points out in his “Hollywood vs. America” lectures at BYU Education Week, have an agenda to “influence culture” and in so doing, produce content that vast numbers of American’s object to and don’t embrace fully, with the number of movie goers over the decades having declined significantly—staggeringly in real numbers. (Sure television and home entertainment competition aside, movie viewing is not as it once was in terms of overall segments of the population and percentages are staggeringly smaller than 60 years ago in terms of people entering theaters to find a culturally enriching experience.)
Many of us train ourselves to “ignore”some of the questionable words, inuendo and content so as to be able to find the rest of the movie as hopefully something of value. And within us, we don’t like that compromise, we don’t like that mixing of the needless crass content with what sometimes otherwise might engage our enthusiasm for what otherwise is an engaging film. We resent this “compromise” We are ready and willing to reward most enthusiastically any movie producer that does not even tempt us with a sense of “selling out” to view their creative production. We rejoice to sit down and view a presentation that is truly devoid of bad content, even one single, subtle ‘potty joke’ geared to the mentality of a 13 year old boy—to his sense of what is “funny.”
There is a vast segment of the population, including myself, which by choice determines to be very, very selective on what movies to go see, wanting to protest against the obvious sleeze hurled our direction when it has no merit for the story or character development, but we discern has been added only as an attempt to continue a moral downward spiral of the culture. How thrilling it is to not have to make that compromise with oneself. My own father has not been inside a movie theater in many decades, which is too bad in a few cases, where he has missed some things that might have been fun for him to see. Perhaps he’s been “burned” a few times with recommendations of what otherwise to him seemed like filth or a compromise of good content? When there is a good story line, something new, and even spectacularly visual, catering to kids and adults, then get ready, the money reward will be achieved, and it is well deserved. If Hollywood wanted money, they know how to get it, but influencing the culture takes top priority over box office success.
This new movie “Up” is looking to deliver in spectacular ways, without even a hint of the “potty humor” referenced in Gary North’s commentary shared in an article he authored back in 2003.
Here is a snippet of what Gary North writes:
“MY MOMENT OF TRUTH
“Years ago, I heard Bill Cosby say why he never used off-color stories or innuendo. It’s too easy to get laughs this way, he said, but it debases comedy. The last four decades have proven him correct. Even very funny men, such as Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams, when on-stage cannot resist foul language. Murphy and Mike Myers spoiled what would have been a flawless “Shrek” with needless scatology. [Amen to this statement!]
“Cosby had it pegged: to make great comedy, your material has to be funny. One test of great comedy is the absence of potty-mouth. Pixar is proving the same thing with respect to animated comedies.
“In an era that has been plagued with decades of needlessly violent scenes, and unfunny, potty-mouth comics, script writers have lost the magic touch.
Then, Gary encourages Hollywood and the great talents to a higher standard, perhaps some day they’ll listen?:
It is not that great talents can’t do it today. Myers, Murphy, and Williams can do it. De Niro, Pacino, and Duvall can do it. Has anyone been as good in both comedy and drama as Sally Fields? Their versatility in front of a camera is enormous – far greater than the big-money stars of the golden age of movies. (I count Paul Newman, a man originally of the ‘fifties, as a “modern,” not an “ancient” – and his wife the same.)
Here is the problem: the scripts are rotten. I don’t mean devoid of creativity. I mean rotten. This inherent moral rottenness mirrors a morally corrupt industry. With the deaths of the old moguls, one by one, men who were not ready to offend the viewers’ sense of moral propriety, the post-1960 era of producers, directors, and script writers have been all too ready to offend.
Hollywood went on the offensive against civility in the 1960’s. This is what has undermined the movies. There is a scene in Neil Simon’s movie, “Butterflies Are Free,” where one of my all-time favorite actresses, Eileen Heckert, plays the author of children’s novels. She gets into an argument with her blind son. They have just returned from a play that featured a lot of violence. He says, “Those things are all part of life.” Heckert replies, “So is diarrhea, but I don’t classify it as entertainment.”
Hollywood forgot.
Years ago, I read an insightful one-liner by one of the Epperson sisters, either Ann Landers or Abigail Van Buren. I think it was Ann Landers. She commented on a particular actress’s wardrobe at a gala event. “It showed everything except good taste.” That could serve as an epitaph for the last three decades of movies.
But not for Pixar.
If “Up” is clean of propaganda and a dumbing down agenda of the culture, devoid of “scatology,” then I think no question it will prove a block buster, breaking all records before it. What else is out there now to compete with it in current summer releases in 2009? Only Hollywood trash. Other studio’s, such as Dreamworks, that produced “Shrek,” did not have the internal goodness to give us a clean film. I for one will not ever own the film unless it is edited and devoid of “scatology.” Shrek by compromising itself, destroyed what might have been a “timeless” classic with needless “potty humor.” Such films I don’t intend to pay money to see, and so I have not supported them at the box office with my dollars.
To watch Pixar’s sure-to-be blockbuster, clips and trailers, go here:
