Paul Provenza on Johnny Carson's Take on the Joke: "Johnny Carson loved this joke. In fact, that’s one of the reason why the film is dedicated to him. He absolutely loved this joke and he had been in contact with Penn shortly before he died, because he was a big fan of their Showtime show ‘Bullshit.’ So they struck up a correspondence and Johnny was completely taken with the whole idea of the movie. In fact, Penn was supposed to show it to him when we got back from Sundance, but Johnny passed away during Sundance so there was a sadness on our parts. But Johnny loved this joke and there are a number of tales of him enjoying the joke or telling the joke or what have you.
He loved the joke. In fact, when I was a kid, we’re talking probably late ‘60s, early ‘70s, something like that, I was watching ‘The Tonight Show’ and Buddy Hackett was on. Buddy Hackett was always an event when he was on the ‘Tonight Show’ because he just got under Johnny’s skin and tickled him like nobody’s business. Buddy Hackett was the filthiest mouth in comedy prior to Bob Saget. They cut away for a commercial break and normally during a commercial break, the band would play and entertain the audience. Well, they came back and for five minutes Johnny was trying to get composure, the audience was dying, Ed McMahon was doing that characteristic guffaw of his, the band was just falling all over each other, and the viewer had no idea what was going on.
Many years later, when I was making my ‘Tonight Show’ debut, I asked one of the segment producers, ‘You know, when I was a kid I saw Buddy Hackett on the show and something happened and Johnny lost it, the crowd went nuts. What went on?” And they knew right away what I was talking about and they told me that just during the commercial break, Buddy Hackett said, ‘Hey, I got a joke for the people,’ and he started to tell this joke. And just as they were coming back from the commercial break and the AD was going 5, 4, 3… he hit the punch line so when the cameras came on, everybody was gone. So Johnny has a rich history with this joke and loved it. Loved hearing other people tell it and it was sad that he never got to see the movie.”
On the Status of Free Speech in America: "To be honest, my concern is really with the media’s response to that because the truth is, we don’t have red states and blue states. We have 50 purple states because there’s a couple of thousand people in every state that made it red or blue. Statistically speaking, in the aggregate of 300 million people, they’re insignificant. So what we really have is 50 purple states.
People often say, ‘How do you think this will play in the red states?’ Well, wait a second. My family, doctors, lawyers, teachers, educators, professionals of all stripes, the fans in the stands at NASCAR, the guys working on farms in Iowa, firemen, truckers, they all tell dirty jokes. This crosses all boundaries. There is no division here. There is no cultural divide when it comes to telling a funny dirty joke. People do it all the time. It is as American as apple pie and handguns. People tell dirty jokes all the time. They’ve been doing it forever. They will always do it and that’s a fact. So there really is no cultural divide when it comes to telling a dirty joke.
The political aspect of all this and the notion of there being this fundamentalist swing in this country is really just a very, very small minority that’s making a big issue out of that. And the press and media have actually picked up on it and bought that propaganda and are perpetuating it. Because now we’re constantly dealing with arbiters of taste saying, ‘Well, we don’t know how to play in the red states. Oh, well, that’s too offensive. Oh, that’s crossing the line.’ What have you. What you have now is artists and arbiters of taste self censoring.
The propaganda is winning by this perpetuation of the fact that this fundamentalist swing is meaningful. It’s not. Eminem still has the number one selling multiplatinum album. Porno is still a gajillion dollar industry a year. Etc. It’s all a lie. The proof of it ultimately that this Christian fundamentalist swing is really a lot of propaganda is that when you go to a hotel and you check in and you get into your room, the porno is still $9.95. The Bible they give you for free. That’s everything you need to know about the reality.”
