"South Park" Guys: Bleep the Oscars!
Forget Canada--blame the Academy Awards organizers for wanting to stuff a big bar of soap in the mouths behind South Park.
After taking the title for filthiest movie ever and scoring a coup with the Best Song contender "Blame Canada," Trey Parker and Matt Stone have a (bleeping) problem about how to perform the (bleeping) song from their (bleeping) epic animated gut-buster South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut for the 72nd annual awards show on ABC.
Most Oscar-nominated songs are belted out as-is, but "Blame Canada," cowritten by Parker and Marc Shaiman, includes several, um, adult lines, including "fuck," "fart" and an anti-Canadian curse directed at "that bitch Anne Murray." In the film, overprotective parents lash out against our neighbors to the north for spawning a movie that turned their children into potty-mouthed shi--, uh, brats. War ensues, people die--including many beady-eyed head-flapping Canadians--and Parker and Stone manage to take a nice healthy jab at censorship and the Motion Picture Association of America in the process.
The irony is thick enough to make you dizzy.
But the ditty is actually one of the cleaner selections from South Park's soundtrack. (It would have been a bigger problem if, say, "Uncle Fukka" or "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch" got the nod). Still, the song's lyrics led Academy Awards producer Lili Fini Zanuck to say, "They need to find a creative solution to the song."
But neither Parker nor Shaiman want to budge, and they're telling the Oscar folks to go bleep themselves--literally. "It would be ironic to have to change the words in a song in a movie about censorship," Shaiman tells the Hollywood Reporter.
The tune from the toon will go up against Diane Warren's "Music of My Heart" from Music of the Heart; Aimee Mann's "Save Me" from Magnolia; Randy Newman's "When She Loved Me" from Toy Story 2; and Phil Collins' "You'll Be in My Heart" from Tarzan. The Oscar ceremony will be telecast March 26 from Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium.
The main rub could actually end up being over the other F-word: fart. While Parker and Shaiman may get the show to bleep out the cuss words, it's still not known whether that familiar flatulent slang will also be gassed from the broadcast.
"We won't tolerate changing the lyrics," Parker tells the Washington Post. "That's the wrong way to go--the song got nominated for what it is."
According to Ain't It Cool News, Parker reportedly told a group at the Directors Guild that even Anne Murray gave him permission to use the "bitch" comment about her in the song, as long as it stays in context.