Per­haps you saw Spike Jonze and Dave Egger’s twee, sun­lit, aching­ly earnest adap­ta­tion of the Mau­rice Sendak clas­sic Where the Wild Things Are. Per­haps you found it irre­sistibly charm­ing. Per­haps, how­ev­er, you missed the sharp edges of Sendak’s lean adven­ture, its under­cur­rent of fer­al vio­lence, its flir­ta­tions with mat­ri­cide and can­ni­bal­ism. Well who bet­ter to con­vey such fright­en­ing under­tones than mas­ter of casu­al men­ace Christo­pher Walken?

Just above, hear him read Wild Things like you’ve nev­er heard it before. Walken’s inter­po­lat­ed com­men­tary on the illus­tra­tions draws our atten­tion to a few fea­tures we prob­a­bly missed in our sev­er­al hun­dred read­ings of the book, such as the pos­si­ble sui­cide of Max’s ted­dy bear and a poten­tial swarm of giant insects in his trans­formed bed­room. After you hear Walken’s take, Max’s harm­less sup­per­time day­dream might give you night­mares.

Walken has long enjoyed enter­tain­ing the kid­dies with his creepy inter­pre­ta­tions of children’s sto­ries. Just above see him read the Three Lit­tle Pigs in 1993 on the British com­e­dy series Sat­ur­day Zoo. Once again, he adds his own explana­to­ry com­ments. He’s a lit­tle more Bil­ly Crys­tal than Cap­tain Koons this time, and if his deliv­ery doesn’t make you LOL, his day-glo sweater and wick­er throne won’t fail to. Host Jonathan Ross liked the read­ing so much he invit­ed Walken to read again in 2009 on his BBC show Fri­day Night with Jonathan Ross. This one’s for the old­er kids—a dead­pan ren­di­tion of Lada Gaga’s “Pok­er Face,” below. Can’t get enough of Walken’s read­ings? Don’t miss Kevin Pollack’s spot-on par­o­dy of the actor Mick­ey Rourke once called a “strange being from anoth­er place.”

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

Hor­ror Leg­end Christo­pher Lee Presents a Heavy Met­al Ver­sion of The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy

Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Read­ings by Reed and Willem Dafoe

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

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.

She didn’t earn the posthu­mous sobri­quet “Comedic Stilet­to” from The New York Times for noth­ing. “Raspy loud­mouth” come­di­an Joan Rivers inspired strong emo­tions and reli­able bursts of con­tro­ver­sy with her abra­sive, take-no-pris­on­ers style. Mas­ter­ing insult com­e­dy was a sur­vival skill for the com­ic who took as much as she dished out while com­ing up in the aggres­sive, most­ly male stand-up world. Before the late-night, fash­ion, and real­i­ty shows, auto­bi­og­ra­phy and doc­u­men­tary, and stints on QVC, Rivers carved paths, paved ways, blazed trails, and left oth­er pio­neer­ing marks for such mas­ters of the put-down as Roseanne Barr, Sarah Sil­ver­man, and oth­ers who—as a 1965 NYT review painful­ly put it—over­came “the hand­i­cap of a woman com­ic.” Ham-fist­ed jabs from the press aside, Rivers said many times she nev­er thought of her­self par­tic­u­lar­ly as a “woman com­ic,” and if that des­ig­na­tion ever sig­ni­fied a “hand­i­cap” or some sort of gim­mick it’s no won­der. She deserved bet­ter than to be patron­ized. Rivers was true to the craft, as every com­ic cur­rent­ly eulo­giz­ing her will tell you, and as she would tell us her­self, at every oppor­tu­ni­ty, but per­haps nev­er more earnest­ly than to Louis C.K. above in a clip from his show. C.K. is moved enough to put one of his sig­na­ture moves on her. Rivers’ response? “Nobody likes necrophil­i­acs.” She will haunt us from the grave with her mor­bid, scalpel-like one-lin­ers, may she rest in peace.

via @sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robin Williams (1951–2014) Per­forms Unknown Shake­speare Play in 1970s Standup Rou­tine

Don Par­do (1918–2014), Voice of Sat­ur­day Night Live, Sug­gests Using Short Words

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