As you might have heard, The Aristocrats (opening this week) is the first film to go unrated due to raw language, and the AMC chain has banned the movie from its theaters. Like the tagline says ("No nudity. No violence. Unspeakable obscenity."), there's not a stitch of clothing removed or blood shed. Instead, co-creators Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette have made a touching, funny film where 100 comedians — old, young, blue and not-so — tell the same gallows riddle (which has become something of a comedian's rite of passage) wrapped in the enigma of one family's fisting, anal sex, bestiality and further depravity. (If you're not familiar with the joke, several renditions are available online, including a South Park telling at www.cartmanthearistocrat.com.) Philadelphia has a major part in this naughty folly. Along with Jillette (whose start has Philadelphia roots, as his stage partner, Teller, is a local with whom he formed the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society) and Provenza (a Penn grad), Philly comedians Dom Irrera and Bob Saget (now relieved of his family-television duties) have some of this film's finest moments. Saget and Jillette chewed the ass, I mean the fat, with me on the phone about the decades-old joke and how it became America's favorite new movie.

City Paper: Where were you when you heard THE JOKE?
Bob Saget: It had to be over 20 years, from another Philly guy yet, Dom Irrera. Only we had to go to L.A. to hear it, in front of the Improv. Now, my comedy's always been the same — really filthy. But I hadn't heard this one. There aren't many comedians who go into comedy about incest, and when they do, it becomes this taboo. "Oh Bob, you're gonna love this," says Dom, who proceeded to tell it. And I'm laughing. Not because it's funny. It's not that funny. But then, we all had a certain edge of desperation to us… which was perfect for the joke. [The joke]'s all about "How low will you go? How disgusting will you get?"
Penn Jillette: Everybody else has this romantic comedy/backstage story to hearing the joke. But I come from the variety arts. So I know I heard it from several carnies in my time. Yet, when I wound up hearing it at a restaurant from Gilbert Gottfried, all other versions flew out of my head.

CP: Gottfried is considered the Coltrane of that joke, right? It's down to the improvisational largesse of those who tell the joke, the athleticism of it all, that gives "The Aristocrats" its zeal.
PJ: Absolutely. What makes a great artist — Stravinsky, Picasso, Miles, Dylan, Gottfried — can be broken into idiosyncratic wackiness, bravery and chops. Or juggling and magic. Juggling is skill, something you can practice forever. I love to practice. Magic is when you know your audience and know different ways of how to say what you're trying to say… Gottfried can analyze and lay out a joke with as much skill as anybody. But then he has that craziness. There are moments where the joke is working — he's funny, the audience is laughing — yet even professional musicians don't know where he's going or what he's doing. It's like Miles [Davis'] Kind of Blue. On "So What," you hear the bass doing the repetitive figure, you get the head, and then Miles comes in and it's… modal jazz.
BS: That's what the movie is about. How everyone gets to the joke and interprets it. It's like a painting class. Some have been there 50 years, some five. Everybody has to paint the same thing. How do they approach the easel? How do they fire the brush strokes? How is it that some of them are still alive, these comedians? It's even about how some comics didn't, wouldn't or couldn't tell the joke.