6 Sneaky Ways Movies and TV Shows Outsmarted the Censors

Show creator Gene Roddenberry had suggested a compromise: they'd shoot two versions of the scene, one with the kiss, and one with a hug, and use whichever worked better. Everyone knew which version NBC was going to want to use, but luckily Shatner had a plan. See, a director can't see exactly what the camera is picking up -- only the camera operator can. So while they were shooting the versions of the scene that would preserve the purity of the white race, Shatner positioned himself so that the director couldn't see his face, stared right into the camera, and made a bunch of stupid faces.

The director, thinking he'd won, immediately called a wrap and sent everyone home. It wasn't until they were going over the dailies that they realized what had happened. They were forced to run the scene as originally scripted, resigning themselves to having to face an explosion of controversy that (twist!) never happened.

Truly, it was a leap forward for human rights, although whether Shatner was fighting for the progression of society or just couldn't stand to miss an opportunity to get busy on national television is anybody's guess.

Given the track record of Matt Stone and Trey Parker's show South Park, it's no surprise that the MPAA changed their movie a lot -- but no one expected those changes to make the movie dirtier. According to Stone and Parker, every time the MPAA told them a scene was too raunchy for an R-rating, they'd submit what they thought was even worse, and, to their surprise, the more disgusting example was always given the green light.

For example, there's a scene in the movie where the kids discover a porn flick starring Cartman's mother. Originally the video was of a woman having sex with a horse, but after the MPAA shot it down, they resubmitted a longer version where she ate human feces. They meant it as a big fat "fuck you for trying to tell us what to do," but the censors thought it was fine.

The same thing supposedly happened with the title: The original name was South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose, but since movies aren't allowed to have "hell" in the title (a rule the MPAA has steadfastly defended forever without compromise), they resubmitted it as South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut -- which was accepted. The MPAA denies this, of course, because otherwise they'd have to admit that they let a boner joke slip past them unchanged, and we all know the MPAA never lets a boner slip by untouched.

Stone goes so far as to say that this trend is the main reason we've never seen a director's cut of their movie -- all the nastiest stuff they thought up actually made it into the theaters. The actual "uncut" version would be, if anything, tamer.

It might not seem outlandish now, but at the time the film was released, any reference to homosexuality was explicitly banned by a strict doctrine of censorship rules known as the Hays Code. And that's not all The Maltese Falcon got away with: Toward the unraveling climax of the film, Sam Spade looks directly at one of the more weaselly henchmen and calls him a hobo's gay sex slave. Did you miss that classic line? Can't picture Bogart casually slurring "You like it from the bum in more ways than one, fella"? That's understandable, considering that the line in question only made it into the film because no one involved in censoring at the time understood gay slang.

Here's Sam Spade referring to Wilmer Cook as a "gunsel" (an old hobo term for a submissive young gay man): "Let's give him the gunsel. He actually did shoot Thursby and Jacoby, didn't he?" Notice the careful way that's worded -- the unfamiliar term, in context, seems to imply that "gunsel" means something like "gunslinger." And to be fair, it kinda did -- just not the type of "guns" the censors were thinking of. None of them bothered to take the time to whip out the Big Gay Dictionary of Hobo Sex Slang to confirm.

It turns out the mistake had precedent: The exact same trick had worked for author Dashiell Hammett years earlier when he was writing the hard-boiled detective novel The Maltese Falcon was based on. His editor left "gunsel" in because he, like the Hays Code guys, didn't recognize the word.

Even more ridiculous, the word "gunsel" started catching on in other detective thrillers ... as a reference to a hired gun. And that's why all of our modern thugs are flamboyant homosexuals. It's true -- just ask the next time you see one. They'll be happy to confirm.

And knives going through hands:

Bullets in the neck, bullets in the torso, bullets in the head painting brains on the wall:

And assuming you take the film's closing scene at face value, murderous Travis Bickle doesn't even pay for his sins. He's hailed a hero and gets away scot-free. The film would obviously be rated at least an R; the only question was whether they'd get slapped with the dreaded X rating.

The filmmakers had an ingenious plan to make sure that didn't happen: nothing. They just repeatedly sent the MPAA copies of the same film each time the ratings agency tried to give it an X. They didn't actually cut any of the gore or violence -- the only change they made was to desaturate the color of the blood a little bit. But over time, says producer Michael Phillips, the MPAA simply became desensitized to the scenes from watching them over and over again -- the very desensitization to violence that moral guardians fear comes from watching violent films. Soon, the producers got credit for cutting content when they'd actually removed nothing. On the one hand, that's awesome, because we got a classic movie out of it, but on the other hand ... that's super awesome, because they completely broke the minds of an entire MPAA review board with Clockwork Orange-style brainwashing.

This bears repeating: Craven stole a rating, released an uncensored version of a film that he had already sent in for review (and was subsequently rejected), then had the balls to market it as being ridiculously violent, and no one at the MPAA ever noticed. Man, we're starting to think you could slap the devil's erect cock in a film and walk away whistlin' Dixie ...

We're not using "demonic" as hyperbole here: About an hour into the film, a demon rapes Jonah Hill. The scene is played up for laughs and doesn't depict anything too graphic, but obviously all rape is considered a bit of a touchy subject. Figuring this scene could cost them dearly with the MPAA, Rogen and Goldberg took advice from their distributor, Sony, and tried a risky tactic: They flooded the censors with needless objectionable material, hoping they would only ask that the outlandish stuff be cut and leave what the filmmakers wanted in the first place intact. So in the demon rape scene, they went out of their way to depict the demon's erect penis.

An erect penis is a huge (well, depending on the dude) no-no in an R-rated film, even during loving, consensual sex. So it seemed like a good plan: throw a demon cock at the censors and slip a rape scene by when they're ducking for cover. But you know how it is -- once you pop, you just can't stop rendering giant evil dicks on film. Right at the end of the movie, we're treated to the sight of a skyscraper-size Satan, his semi-truck of a dick swinging in the burning wind. The magical blue light of heaven slices the member right off, and poor Satan picks up his disembodied wang and wails.

The men sent their cut to the MPAA and waited for feedback. They hoped the graphic cock shots would get cut and the content they actually wanted to keep would stick around.

The film came back rated R, no cuts.

As Seth Rogen once said: It just takes one fan of dick jokes giggling, and then the whole room will be happy to see your penis.

We might be paraphrasing a bit there.

Ryan Menezes is a writer and layout editor here at Cracked. He broke down and made a Twitter page just for his Cracked fans.

Related Reading: Sometimes censorship can be hilarious. Case in point: "Yippie-ki-yay, Mister Falcon!" And of course there's the utterly wordless Frank Zappa album that somehow earned a "Parental Advisory" sticker. Ready for more of Big Brother's failures? Click right here.

Check out Robert Evans' A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization, a celebration of the brave, drunken pioneers who built our civilization one seemingly bad decision at a time.