Flying Fuck (1932)?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/14/2008 01:22 AM, James Harbeck wrote:
>A scriptwriter worth his salt would not
>not have, for instance,
>
>A: Now, if you don't mind, I have to go see a man about a --
>B: Alright, already!
>
>[where "dog" is intended]
>
>or
>
>A: He thinks it's a brilliant transformation, but
>I think it's like putting lipstick on a --
>B: Never mind!
>
>[where "pig" is intended]
>
>unless something previous in the script has made
>mention of dogs or pigs somehow taboo or
>undesirable or otherwise impolite (for instance,
>if character B had had a bad encounter with a dog
>or a pig).

Or previous bad encounters with A, whom he detests as an over-user of cliches.

>So our next question here would be whether "take
>a flyin' leap" could have been seen as impolite
>at the time. Admittedly, to go so far as to
>suggest that the next word would be "fuck" might
>have been quite something for 1932. But if the
>next word were not something impolite, from a
>scriptwriting perspective, it would be hard to
>justify the cut-off as it is unless the second
>speaker had some other perceptible reason to cut
>him off, e.g., he was being garrulous and
>tiresome.

When I questioned whether the omitted word could have been "leap", I
was only commenting in the light of a possible entry in the
OED.  Presumably, if the F-word does not actually appear in the
_Scarface_ script, the utterance is not eligible.

Joel



Joel

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