jabberwocky
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« Reply #4 on: August 26, 2001, 05:32:29 PM » |
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Heres some words I found from the director (Louis CK) of the movie on Usenet,
"I named the movie and the character. Pootie Tang is a guy who speaks in a language which I invented. He's basically saying things that sound cool, that sound expressive but aren't in any real words. When spoken right, however, anyone can understand what he says. In the movie, the main character (pootie tang) only ever speaks in this language. everyone else speaks english but they always understand pootie. No one ever goes "Huh?" . There's also sort of a feeling that, he is so expressive as a man, his personality is so shiny, that he does not need words, he is macro-poetic and beyond syntax and vocabulary. So when he utters the words, "Sine on the lematane, my damie" Women scream really loud and lose their minds, guys run into brick walls in admiration.
Contrary to what people may think, this language is not related to jive or Eubonics, it doesn't really have anything to do with pootie being black. The fact is that I invented most of the words he uses when i was about ten years old. I loved to talk that way when I was a kid. I made up all kinds of words that i would say around the house. I would dress up like a superhero and make people call me "Panertan Man". Pootie says Panertan sometimes. The fact that lance and most of the other folks in the movie are black is due to the fact that i was part of the chris rock show community when i wrote it. Lance Crouther who plays Pootie is one of the funniest people I ever knew and a great actor. Chris is great and obviously i am lucky to have him in the movie too. I don't know, i would probably have made pootie black anyway. When I was a kid, all my heros were black. Mohamad Ali (sp?), Bill Cosby, Martin Luther King Jr., Richar Pryor, Bruce Lee (thought he was black when i was seven), Doctor J.. But anyway the language is just a nonsense language that i made up as a kid. And Pootie's name (to finally get to your question) just sort of flowed out of that. Believe it or not, the fact that it sounds like slang for vagina or p***y is a total accident. I HONESTLY didn't think of it that way when I came up with it. It's just fun, silly sounds Pootie tang! Hey, pootie tang! what you doing? "I'm a tine cappy my damie. Whadataaah!" See, it just sort of fits in with the rest. The original name of the movie was "Pootie Tang in Sine your Pitty on the runny kine" but i knew that would never make it to the marquis (sp?).
So that's where it came from. It isn't dirty, sexy, or a play on rappers, pimps or any other stereotypy s**t. Pootie is a very positive role model. Kids love him, but he refuses to trade on his fame by selling them unhealthy products and sneakers they can't afford. Instead he makes PSAs telling them to eat their vegetables. Women fall all over him, but he doens't exploit them. He's above that. And while he fights gun-toting drug dealers, he doens't turn to guns himself. he doesn't fight murder with more murder like some action heros. He dodges bullets by just dancing around and being too cool to shoot and then gives the bad guys an old fashioned daddy ass-whupping with nothing but his belt. That's Pootie Tang, not a word for p***y. People might ask, why didn't you come up with another name that sounds less like p***y? Well, I didn't sit down with a bunch of candidates and pick a name out of many. It just came out. As soon as I saw him in my head, I knew he was Pootie Tang. And he could never, never be anyone else. That's just the way it feels sometimes.
The most unfortunate thing, I think, that came out of the re-thinking of the movie by the studio, is that they actually ran away from the language. Many lines by Pootie were cut. He's almost Chaplin in this film. I gave him very few anyway, because it's hard for pootie to carry a long dialogue, but what little he had they cut down too much. If you see the trailer, you'll notice that he only says 'sa da tai" twice and that's it. And he's the star, and his language is the whole reason the movie exists. But when they showed the movie to the test audience, they asked "did anything confuse you?" and they said 'the language. I didn't understand what he was saying. It wasn't english." So they went "Holy s**t! We gotta get that s**t out of there!" and there I was going, "um, but that's the whole...." I better stop there. Great experience, thankful for it. God bless america."
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