According to one of my favorite web sites, the Internet Movie Database, the plot to the motion picture, The Aristocrats, is described as:

One hundred superstar comedians tell the same very, VERY dirty, filthy joke–one shared privately by comics since Vaudeville.

An article in today’s New York Times puts it this way:

How do you sell a movie about the dirtiest joke ever told?

Note to reader: None of the good parts of the joke will be told during the course of this article. Or in any of the ads. Or in the trailer. In fact, much of the content of the movie, a documentary called “The Aristocrats,” is basically unrepeatable in just about any mainstream public forum.

Which is the essence of the problem.

In the Times article, Penn is quotes as saying,

“There is no violence or hostility of any kind” in “The Aristocrats,” explained Penn Jillette, an executive producer of the film, who is better known as half of the magic act Penn and Teller. “We want to say: ‘We have 150 really funny human beings in the back of a room making each other laugh, but they’re going to be swearing, and if you don’t want to hear swearing, you better not come in.’ “

Priceless. Absolutely priceless.

And this should put to bed the question of how one can outdo a Showtime series called, Bullshit.

ADDED 7/11/2005: It is becoming readily apparent to me that “The Aristocrats” is not going to suffer the same fate as did “The Blair Witch Project” — which is to say, it appears to me many people still aren’t getting the joke. Which, naturally, makes the joke even funnier. This may become the Mobius Strip movie of the decade.