A Soviet Animation of Stephen King’s Short Story “Battleground” (1986)

in Animation | September 26th, 2014

Stephen King has that rare, and spec­tac­u­lar­ly prof­itable, skill to suck you into his world and com­pel you to flip to the next page. And when you’re hooked, his words have the uncan­ny abil­i­ty to sim­ply unfold like a movie in your head. So it isn’t sur­pris­ing that his books have been wide­ly adapt­ed to the sil­ver screen. Some are flat out mas­ter­pieces. Oth­ers are most decid­ed­ly not. This appre­ci­a­tion by film­mak­ers of King’s sto­ry­telling chops isn’t just con­tained to this side of the Iron Cur­tain. In 1986, Sovi­et ani­ma­tor Mikhail Titov — whose pre­vi­ous work includes How the Cos­sacks Played Foot­ball (1970) — turned King’s short sto­ry “Bat­tle­ground” (1972) into an ani­mat­ed movie, titled sim­ply Сражение or Bat­tle.

The short is about a noirish hired gun who dress­es in a trench coat and a fedo­ra and bears more than a pass­ing resem­blance to Vladimir Putin. He is con­tract­ed to kill a toy mak­er. When he returns home, he dis­cov­ers that there’s a box on his doorstep and makes the com­plete­ly unwise deci­sion of tak­ing it inside. Soon, toy sol­diers start to tum­ble out of the box. They have live ammo, rock­et launch­ers, tiny lit­tle heli­copters at their dis­pos­al and they are on a sin­gle-mind­ed mis­sion to kill him. The killer soon finds him­self pinned down in bath­room, wait­ing for the next attack.

The film is a lot of fun. Titov relies heav­i­ly on roto­scop­ing – an ani­ma­tion tech­nique you prob­a­bly remem­ber from A‑ha’s music video Take On Me. The killer’s form and move­ments feel real­is­tic as the rest of the movie’s height­ened, brood­ing world bends and bulges as if ren­dered through a fish­eye lens. And like A‑ha, the film’s synth and sax­o­phone sound­track might sound painful­ly 80s to some. You can watch Bat­tle with sub­ti­tles above or with­out sub­ti­tles below. The dia­logue is min­i­mal through­out.

Bat­tle will be added to our list of Free Ani­ma­tions, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Comes Soft Rain’

Enjoy 15+ Hours of the Weird and Won­der­ful World of Post Sovi­et Russ­ian Ani­ma­tion

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks

in Art | September 25th, 2014

Nighthawks1

Edward Hop­per’s Nighthawks (1942) does­n’t just evoke a cer­tain stripe of mid-cen­tu­ry, after-hours, big-city Amer­i­can lone­li­ness; it has more or less come to stand for the feel­ing itself. But as with most images that passed so ful­ly into the realm of icon­hood, we all too eas­i­ly for­get that the paint­ing did­n’t sim­ply emerge com­plete, ready to embed itself in the zeit­geist. Robin Cem­balest at ART­news has a post on how Edward Hop­per “sto­ry­board­ed” Nighthawks, find­ing and sketch­ing out mod­els for those three melan­cholic cus­tomers (one of whom you can see in an ear­ly ren­der­ing above), that whole­some young atten­dant in white, and the all-night din­er (which you can see come togeth­er in chalk on paper below) in which they find refuge.

Nighthawks2

These “19 stud­ies for Nighthawks,” writes Cem­balest, “reveal how Hop­per chore­o­graphed his voyeuris­tic scene of the night­time con­ver­gence of the man, a cou­ple, and a serv­er in the eerie Deco din­er, refin­ing every nuance of the coun­ter­top, the fig­ures, the archi­tec­ture, and the effects of the flu­o­res­cent light­ing.”

In each sketch, more pieces have fall­en into place: a din­er assumes their posi­tion, the light finds its angle, the per­spec­tive shifts to that of an out­sider on the dark­ened street. Cem­balest quotes Whit­ney cura­tor Carter Fos­ter describ­ing the final prod­uct as a “mar­velous demon­stra­tion of both extreme speci­fici­ty and near abstract com­po­si­tion­al sum­ma­tion on the same sur­face beguil­ing­ly [which] reflects how empir­i­cal obser­va­tion and imag­i­na­tion coex­ist­ed in Hopper’s head.”

Nighthawks3

Despite how many ele­ments of the real world Hop­per stud­ied to cre­ate Nighthawks, it ulti­mate­ly depicts no real place. The painter him­self posed for the male fig­ures, and his wife mod­eled for the female. As for the locale, seen in the final draw­ing just above, Cem­balest notes that “after years of research and schol­ar­ship, experts have deter­mined that Nighthawks was not inspired by one spe­cif­ic din­er. Rather, it was a com­pos­ite of wedge-shaped inter­sec­tions around Green­wich Avenue. Its curv­ing prow seems part­ly inspired by the Flat­iron Build­ing.” In a way, it almost seemed too real­is­ti­cal­ly New York to actu­al­ly exist in New York. Hop­per paint­ed a dis­til­la­tion of a sense of Amer­i­can place, and like many Amer­i­can places, I’ve nev­er quite known whether I’d love to drop in at the Nighthawks din­er (though I’d have to find a front door first), or whether I should count myself lucky that life has­n’t rel­e­gat­ed me to it. You can learn more about the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry­board­ing of Nighthawks at Art News and see many more sketch­es. Speak­ing of the sketch­es, they come cour­tesy of The Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art.

Nighthawks4

via ART­News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Painters Paint­ing: The Defin­i­tive Doc­u­men­tary Por­trait of the New York Art World (1940–1970)

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

William S. Bur­roughs Shows You How to Make “Shot­gun Art”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Sneak Preview of Haruki Murakami’s Forthcoming Illustrated Novel, The Strange Library

in Art, Books | September 25th, 2014

illustrated murkami

Quick note: If you just fin­ished read­ing Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age, and if you’re now han­ker­ing for some more Muraka­mi, you won’t have to wait very long. In Decem­ber, his next book, a 96 page novel­la called The Strange Library, will be pub­lished by Knopf. And already, thanks to The Guardian, you can get a sneak pre­view of the illus­trat­ed edi­tion. When you enter the Guardian gallery, make sure you click the arrows in the top right cor­ner of the first image to see the illus­tra­tions in a larg­er for­mat. The book can be pre-ordered here.

In the mean­time, we have a few Muraka­mi items (sto­ries, music, film, etc.) to keep you busy this fall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 5 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

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Art Garfunkel Lists 1195 Books He Read Over 45 Years, Plus His 157 Favorites (Many Free)

in Literature, Music | September 25th, 2014

Image by Nation­aal Archief, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you’ve been won­der­ing what Art Gar­funkel has been up to late­ly, the answer is that it seems that he’s been read­ing. A lot.

The lanky, curly-haired num­ber two guy for the sem­i­nal folk-rock band Simon & Gar­funkel has been keep­ing track of every sin­gle thing he has read from June 1968 until Octo­ber 2013 and he’s post­ed all of them  — 1,195 texts — on his web­site. The first item on his list is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Con­fes­sions and the last is Witold Gom­brow­icz’s Cos­mos. In between, Gar­funkel has knocked through some seri­ous­ly daunt­ing tomes –War and Peace, Ulysses, Mid­dle­march, Remem­brance of Things Past and Immanuel Kant’s Foun­da­tions of the Meta­physics of Morals. He even report­ed­ly read the entire Ran­dom House Dic­tio­nary.

His tastes gen­er­al­ly run towards the greats of the West­ern Canon with some more pulpy works thrown in along the way. J.K. Rowl­ing, Anne Rice and Dan Brown make appear­ances, as does E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey. For those who find it daunt­ing to look at a list of 1,1195 books, Gar­funkel also pro­vides a list of his 157 favorites, which includes many great pub­lic domain works found in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions. You can 15 of Art’s favorites here:

“I read for the read­ing plea­sure, not for the gold star,” Gar­funkel told Nick Paum­garten of the New York­er in an inter­view a few years back. “Read­ing is a way to take down­time and make it stim­u­lat­ing. If you’re in the wait­ing room of a dentist’s office and don’t want to twid­dle your thumbs, you turn to Tol­stoy.”
Garfunkel’s list, or “library” as his web­site calls it, cre­ates an expec­tant­ly inti­mate por­trait of the artist. In the win­ter 1970, when Simon & Gar­funkel released their biggest sell­ing album, Like a Bridge Over Trou­bled Water, just as the duo was break­ing up, Gar­funkel blew through Moby Dick and Goethe’s The Sor­rows of Young Werther before mov­ing on to Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nau­sea and then lat­er Bertrand Russell’s The Con­quest of Hap­pi­ness. When the duo reunit­ed to play their famous con­cert in Cen­tral Park in 1981, Gar­funkel pol­ished off Dick­ens’ Nicholas Nick­le­by. And when Simon & Gar­funkel was induct­ed into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Jan­u­ary 1990, he was read­ing Antho­ny Trollope’s An Auto­bi­og­ra­phy.

The one type of book he doesn’t read is post­mod­ern lit­er­a­ture. His list of some 1195 books con­tains no men­tion of the likes of Don DeLil­lo, Don­ald Barthelme or Thomas Pyn­chon. “I tried Gravity’s Rain­bow, and I thought it was fraud­u­lent,” Gar­funkel said.

Image above tak­en by Eddie Mallin.

via @pickover

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Steven Soder­bergh Posts a List of Every­thing He Watched and Read in 2009

Joseph Brodsky’s Read­ing List For Hav­ing an Intel­li­gent Con­ver­sa­tion

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

 

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Watch George Harrison’s Final Interview and Performance (1997)

in Music | September 25th, 2014

Before John Fugel­sang was a well-known polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor reg­u­lar­ly opin­ing at Huff­in­g­ton Post, MSNBC, and CNN, he caught a big break as a host on VH1 in the 90s, where he was, in his own words, “their de fac­to clas­sic rock guy.” Inter­view­ing the illus­tri­ous likes of Paul McCart­ney, Pete Town­shend, Eric Clap­ton, Rob­bie Robert­son, and Willie Nel­son, Fugel­sang had the chance to host “the most incred­i­ble all-star con­certs that nobody would watch.” At least one of those con­certs became tremen­dous­ly sig­nif­i­cant in hindsight—on July 24, 1997, George Har­ri­son came by the stu­dio, talked at length about the Bea­t­les, his own music, and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, giv­ing what would turn out to be his very last pub­lic inter­view and per­for­mance. Watch it above in a re-broad­cast. That same year, Har­ri­son was diag­nosed with throat can­cer. He died in 2001.

Har­ri­son appeared with his old friend Ravi Shankar—he had just pro­duced Shankar’s Chants of India—and had only planned to stop by, Fugel­sang says, and “give us a lit­tle 10-minute sound byte.” Instead they talked for twice that long and Har­ri­son played, among oth­er things, his clas­sic “All Things Must Pass” from his 1970 solo record of the same name (above). The inter­view was, of course, a high point for the show’s host, who did every­thing he could to keep Har­ri­son talk­ing, con­nect­ing with him over their shared inter­est in reli­gious faith. For Har­ri­son, there was no sep­a­rat­ing music and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Reflect­ing on Shankar’s album, he says

And that’s real­ly why for me this record’s impor­tant, because it’s anoth­er lit­tle key to open up the with­in. For each indi­vid­ual to be able to sit and turn off, um…“turn off your mind relax and float down­stream” and lis­ten to some­thing that has its root in a tran­scen­den­tal, because real­ly even all the words of these songs, they car­ry with it a very sub­tle spir­i­tu­al vibra­tion. And it goes beyond intel­lect real­ly. So if you let your­self be free to let that have an effect on you, it can have an effect, a pos­i­tive effect.

Har­ri­son and Fugel­sang also dis­cussed the 1970 Con­cert for Bangladesh, which was part­ly set in motion by Shankar. In a life that includ­ed play­ing in the most famous band in the world then sus­tain­ing one of the most pro­duc­tive and suc­cess­ful solo careers in rock, 1970 was a water­shed year for Har­ri­son. The Bangladesh ben­e­fit marked the live debut of many of Har­rison’s first solo com­po­si­tions; and for a great many George Har­ri­son fans, the Phil Spec­tor-pro­duced All Things Must Pass is the purest expres­sion of the soft-spo­ken musician’s genius.

I only speak for myself in point­ing to the haunt­ing, hyp­not­ic “The Bal­lad of Sir Frankie Crisp” (above) as the most beau­ti­ful and mys­te­ri­ous song on that album. Last night—it being George Har­ri­son week on Conan O’Brien—Harrison’s son Dhani came on the show to play that song and “Let It Down,” also from All Things Must Pass. His appear­ance fol­lows Paul Simon’s Tues­day night ren­di­tion of “Here Comes the Sun” and Beck’s cov­er of Harrison’s “Wah Wah” on Mon­day. These per­for­mances mark the release of a new Har­ri­son box set, which has also occa­sioned a Sep­tem­ber 28th all-star trib­ute con­cert at L.A.’s Fon­da The­ater. Learn more about that event and oth­er Har­ri­son trib­utes and hap­pen­ings at Con­se­quence of Sound.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele, With Words and Music

Phil Spector’s Gen­tle Pro­duc­tion Notes to George Har­ri­son Dur­ing the Record­ing of All Things Must Pass

Ravi Shankar Gives George Har­ri­son a Sitar Les­son … and Oth­er Vin­tage Footage

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Henri Matisse Illustrates Baudelaire’s Censored Poetry Collection, Les Fleurs du Mal

in Art, Poetry | September 24th, 2014

Matisse-Baudelaire1

We pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Hen­ri Matis­se’s illus­tra­tions for a 1935 edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses. If the Odyssey-themed etch­ings he did for that book sur­prised you, have a look at his illus­tra­tions for Charles Baude­laire’s poet­ry col­lec­tion Les Fleurs du mal, first pub­lished in 1857. Accord­ing to Henri-Matisse.net, the book (avail­able in French and Eng­lish in our col­lec­tion of 600 Free eBooks) had “been illus­trat­ed over the years by a vari­ety of major artists, includ­ing Emile Bernard, Charles Despi­au, Jacob Epstein, Gus­tave Rodin, Georges Rouault, and Pierre-Yes Tré­mois. Each inter­pret­ed select­ed poems more or less faith­ful­ly. Matisse took a dif­fer­ent approach in the 1947 edi­tion pub­lished by La Bib­lio­thèque Française.” As you can see from the exam­ples pro­vid­ed here, he went an even more uncon­ven­tion­al route this time, accom­pa­ny­ing Baude­laire’s poems with noth­ing but por­trai­ture.

Matisse-Baudelaire2

The edi­tion’s 33 por­traits, includ­ing one of Matisse him­self and one of Baude­laire, cap­ture a vari­ety of sub­jects, most­ly women — also a source of inspi­ra­tion for the poet. How­ev­er, as the site that bears his name makes clear, “Matisse did not indulge in the bio­graph­i­cal fal­lac­i­es of the lit­er­ary crit­ics of his day who attempt­ed to under­stand Baude­laire by asso­ci­at­ing each poem with the woman who may have inspired it. Thus, his gallery of facial por­traits pro­vides an accom­pa­ni­ment rather than an imi­ta­tive ren­di­tion of select­ed poems.” Would that more illus­tra­tors of lit­er­a­ture fol­low his exam­ple and make a break from pure lit­er­al­ism, allow­ing the mean­ing of the rela­tion­ship between text and image to cohere in the read­er-view­er’s mind. You might say that Matisse pio­neered, in oth­er words, the most poet­ic pos­si­ble method of illus­trat­ing poet­ry.

Matisse-Baudelaire3

Since it is Banned Books Week, it’s per­haps worth not­ing that Baude­laire’s Les Fleurs du Mal was quick­ly cen­sored in France. Yale’s Mod­ernism Lab web­site notes that, two months after its pub­li­ca­tion in 1857, a French court “banned six of Baudelaire’s erot­ic poems, two of them on les­bian themes and the oth­er four het­ero­sex­u­al but mild­ly sado-masochis­tic. The ban was not offi­cial­ly lift­ed until 1949, by which time Baude­laire had achieved ‘clas­sic’ sta­tus as among the most impor­tant influ­ences on mod­ern lit­er­a­ture in France and through­out Europe.” A sec­ond expur­gat­ed (or as Baude­laire called it “muti­lat­ed”) edi­tion was pub­lished in 1861. Pre­sum­ably Matisse illus­trat­ed that edi­tion in 1947. If you want to buy one of the 300 copies with Matis­se’s illus­tra­tions, you will have to shell out about $7500.

matisse portrait

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Hear Gertrude Stein Read Works Inspired by Matisse, Picas­so, and T.S. Eliot (1934)

Vin­tage Film: Watch Hen­ri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Cartoonists Draw Their Famous Cartoon Characters While Blindfolded (1947)

in Comics/Cartoons | September 24th, 2014

Vintage-Cartoonists-draw-blindfolded

At some point in your life, no doubt, you’ve thought that you have done some­thing so many times that you could do it with your eyes closed — be it change a dia­per, make cof­fee, dri­ve to work or per­form a minor sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dure. Not that this would nec­es­sar­i­ly be a good idea (espe­cial­ly that last one) but there’s some­thing about rep­e­ti­tion, rou­tine and mus­cle mem­o­ry that makes a task so famil­iar that sight seems super­flu­ous.

dick tracy

In 1947, LIFE Mag­a­zine asked some of the most famous car­toon­ists around to draw their com­ic strip char­ac­ters blind­fold­ed. The results are fas­ci­nat­ing, look­ing a bit like the out­come of a clin­i­cal test on artists before and after tak­ing illic­it sub­stances. (See our pre­vi­ous post: Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment.)

dagwood

Chic Young’s blind­fold­ed ver­sion of Dag­wood Bum­stead is all dynam­ic lines and spi­rals, look­ing a bit like a doo­dle from an Ital­ian Futur­ist. Chester Gould’s blind attempt at Dick Tra­cy’s chis­eled pro­file looks not all that dif­fer­ent from the sight­ed ver­sion. And Mil­ton Can­iff’s Steve Canyon has all the ele­ments there — the flinty eyes, the wavy hair – but it’s all jum­bled togeth­er.

steve canyon

You can see more such draw­ings here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters

Vis­it the World of Lit­tle Nemo Artist Win­sor McCay: Three Clas­sic Ani­ma­tions and a Google Doo­dle

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons are Made

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

 

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Monty Python and the Holy Grail Censorship Letter: We Want to Retain “Fart in Your General Direction”

in Comedy | September 24th, 2014

Python Letter

If any­one could make toi­let humor fun­ny past the age of 14, it was Mon­ty Python. Min­ing equal­ly the halls of acad­e­mia and the grade school yard, there was no reg­is­ter too high or too low for the mas­ter­ful British satirists. And when it came time for them to release their sec­ond film in 1975—Arthurian spoof Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail—the troop fought in vain to reach an audi­ence of all ages. Unlike today’s many rat­ings gra­da­tions, the British Board of Film Clas­si­fi­ca­tion (BBFC) then had a very sim­ple clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem: AA for 14 and over, and A for ages 5–14. Hop­ing to increase the film’s audi­ence, pro­duc­er Mark Forstater wrote the let­ter above to fel­low pro­duc­er Michael White a few days after a Twick­en­ham screen­ing attend­ed by BBFC mem­ber Tony Ker­pel, who sug­gest­ed a few cuts to bring the film an A rat­ing.

In the let­ter, Forstater lists Kerpel’s rec­om­men­da­tions:

Lose as many shits as pos­si­ble
Take Jesus Christ out, if pos­si­ble
Lose “I fart in your gen­er­al direc­tion”
Lose “the oral sex”
Lose “oh, fuck off”
Lose “We make cas­tanets out of your tes­ti­cles”

Two of these lines you no doubt rec­og­nize as uttered by the obnox­ious mock­ing French guard the Grail questers encounter on their jour­ney. Played by John Cleese, the French­man gets some of the best lines in the film, includ­ing the offend­ing “fart” and “tes­ti­cles” bits (at 2:15 and 6:05 in the clip above). Forstater must have had a keen sense of just how funny—therefore how necessary—these lines were. In his sug­ges­tions to White, he writes,

I would like to get back to the Cen­sor and agree to lose the shits, take the odd Jesus Christ out and lose Oh fuck off, but to retain ‘fart in your gen­er­al direc­tion’, ‘cas­tanets of your tes­ti­cles’ and ‘oral sex’ and ask him for an ‘A’ rat­ing on that basis.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Britain’s Python-lov­ing kids and for the film’s investors, the AA rat­ing stuck, at least until 2006, when it was re-rat­ed for ages 12 and below in a the­atri­cal re-release. This by con­trast to its U.S. sta­tus, where the movie first scored a PG rat­ing and was lat­er upgrad­ed to PG-13 (which didn’t exist in 1975) for its Blu-ray release. Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail has received a vari­ety of mature rat­ings in var­i­ous coun­tries and—we should men­tion, since it’s Banned Books Week—has been entire­ly banned in Malaysia.

Anoth­er com­e­dy team encoun­tered sim­i­lar dif­fi­cul­ties with film rat­ings. The South Park duo—similarly adept at pitch­ing pot­ty jokes to grown-ups—ended up with an R for the fea­ture length Big­ger, Longer & Uncut, though cen­sors orig­i­nal­ly want­ed an NC-17. See the cuts the MPAA rec­om­mend­ed for that film in Matt Stone’s leg­endary response memo to the rat­ings board and read the full tran­script of the Python let­ter at Let­ters of Note.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch All of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions in a Row

Mon­ty Python Sings “The Philosopher’s Song,” Reveal­ing the Drink­ing Habits of Great Euro­pean Thinkers

Clas­sic Mon­ty Python: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Engage in a Hilar­i­ous Bat­tle of Wits

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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