Get Fuck’d This Week at The Alamo

It’s just a fucking word, people. Seriously, what the fuck?

Steve Anderson's documentary Fuck, a hit at this year’s SXSW, takes an honest look at everyone’s favorite four letter word. Part comedy, part earnest anthropological exploration, the film explores our fascination with, and the power of, this ubiquitous swear word. The film features interviews with a host of fascinating subjects, ranging from our most recent favorite genius, David Milch, to Hunter S. Thompson to Pat Boone. Yea, that Pat Boone. You got a fucking problem with it?

[from the LA Weekly]

"Profound and joyously silly at the same time, Steve Anderson's documentary about our most potent secular blasphemy comes at the word and subject from every conceivable angle: Its awesome power to offend the listener and to empower its utterer. Its obscure etymological origins. Its centrality to issues of free speech - from Lady Chatterley and Lenny Bruce to Dick Cheney's admonition to Senator Patrick Leahy to "Go fuck yourself" and the FCC's decision, on the very same day, to impose stinging fines on broadcasters permitting the word's utterance over the public airwaves. The determination of right-wingers to suppress it and of comedians to shout it from the hilltops.

Witnesses from all sides are consulted, including the mealy-mouthed Pat Boone, who uses his own name as a cuss word ("Aw... Boone!"), and renowned scatologist and serial fuck-sayer Kevin Smith. Add into this heady mix Dennis Prager, who thinks the word will destroy the American empire as surely as the Visigoths destroyed that of Rome, and potty-talkin' Ice-T, who would probably be just fine with that, and a mere monosyllable emerges as a heavily disputed cultural totem and taboo. Prize moment: when an estimate of the film's own potential fines - per 'fuck'- reaches into the hundreds of millions."

Check out an interview with Anderson on IndieWire, as well as his blog from SXSW, and read A.O. Scott’s review in the New York Times.

Fuck screens Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week at the Alamo Downtown. Click here for showtimes and tickets.