Here’s Matt Berry Reading Matt Stone’s Letter to the MPAA About the ‘South Park’ Movie
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut would have earned a NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America had Trey Parker and Matt Stone not made significant, hilarious and dramatic cuts that sound even better in a booming bass voice.
Leading up to the release of the feature film adaptation of the most controversial cartoon on television in 1999, South Park creators Parker and Stone fought one of the most protracted and preposterous battles with America’s official movie censors in the history of the MPAA. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut famously earned a NC-17 rating upon its first submission for review by the cinematic overseers with notoriously opaque and dubious methodology for determining a film’s classification, and it would take Parker and Stone five more tries to finally get the rating down to a simple R.
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During the back-and-forth between the most obscene and hilarious animators on the planet and the professional censors who held the fate of every film in their pearl-clutching hands, Stone sent a cut of the film to the MPAA along with a letter that went down as one of the most iconic pieces of professional correspondence ever penned. At a recent Letters Live event at the Royal Albert Hall, London, What We Do in the Shadows star and U.K. comedy legend Matt Berry delivered a stirring reading of Stone’s letter to the censors, and the words “Saddam Hussein’s penis" have never sounded so substantial:
While Parker and Stone may have been forced to make drastic cuts to the crassness of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut in order to escape the NC-17 rating that proves fatal for any film’s box-office return, the South Park creators still managed to sneak in some serious obscenities into the show’s first feature film. In fact, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut holds the Guinness World Record for “Most Swearing in an Animated Movie.”
Parker and Stone claim that they were only able to push through South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut in its semi-unsullied state after their producers at Paramount began to throw their weight around, with many movers and shakers at the film production companies being MPAA members themselves. Following the release of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, MPAA President Jack Valenti publicly expressed his regret that he allowed the animated movie to proceed with its record-breaking objectionability, especially considering how many kids managed to sneak in to the R-rated screenings.
And although the MPAA was unhappy with the concessions they made to South Park, the moralistic movie gatekeepers should count themselves lucky that it took audiences this long to hear the line “cum-sucking ass” in all its spectacular, sonorous glory.
