Alright, Alright, Alright by Melissa Maerz

Author:Melissa Maerz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2020-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

The “Fuck” Police

“You want me to quit this movie right now?”

Ben Affleck with Dazed crew member (and future director) Athina Rachel Tsangari.

Courtesy of Richard Linklater.

When it came to the final cut of a movie that was full of cursing, drinking, and smoking weed, there was one person who believed in propriety: producer Jim Jacks. He tormented Richard Linklater in pursuit of it, even though he was known to drink and curse himself, and the two men fought hard over two scenes: when the freshman boys pour paint on O’Bannion (Ben Affleck), and when Mitch (Wiley Wiggins) makes out with Julie (Catherine Morris) in the grass while “Summer Breeze” plays in the background. The cast was caught in the middle between Linklater and Jacks, unsure whether they should listen to the cool, permissive director or the guy who was in greater danger of totally losing his mind.

Deena Martin-DeLucia: Universal wanted to keep the movie PG-13. It ended up being rated R because of the language. And Jim Jacks was so angry at us, and angry at Rick.

Jim Jacks: I wasn’t trying to get a PG-13. I knew we weren’t gonna get that. But there is a section of the audience that is turned off somewhat by heavy profanity. I was watching dailies, and I’d asked to cut down on the profanity, because I said, “Guys, each of you is saying ‘fuck’ twice every scene. Now, if you guys each do that, and we shoot for 48 days, we’re gonna end up cutting a movie that’s gonna sound like Mean Streets. We’re gonna have 700 versions of ‘slut’ and ‘cunt’ and ‘cocksucker.’ Use it sparingly!”

Mark Vandermeulen: I got a talking-to by Jim because I dropped 50 f-bombs in that movie. I was 14 years old. It was the best thing ever. It was like a cursing free-for-all!

Katy Jelski: We had to try to get a clean version of stuff without all the “fucks,” and it was really hard to get those boys to stop cursing. Rick wasn’t experienced working in a commercial system. He hadn’t had to deal with rating boards and PG versions and PG-13 or whatever it was. He was pretty laissez-faire about that stuff.

Mark Vandermeulen: Later, I had to go back and dub over some f-words. I had to turn a “fuck” into a “shit” or a “damn.”

Richard Linklater: Jim just assigned himself to be the “fuck” police. I said, “Jim, we’ve got kids drinking. We’ve got kids breaking bottles. We’ve got kids smoking pot. Everybody in this movie is underage. We have an R in the first eight seconds of this movie! We could change every ‘fuck’ to a ‘fudge’ and we’d still have an R. So let’s at least be authentic.”

Sasha Jenson: Jim would come up and go, “No more swearing!” And then Rick would come up and go, “Swear as much as you want!” And we didn’t know who to listen to. Ben said, “You gotta listen to the producer.” It was like having two sets of parents.

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