Provocative Content Quotes

Though both erotica and pornography refer to verbal or pictorial representations of sexual behavior, they are as different as a room with doors open and one with doors locked. The first might be a home, but the second could only be a prison.

When I started out playing small clubs, you could feel the room recoil from certain kinds of songs. Anything that was too personal, that had a sentiment to it, or was laying out your feelings, was immediately booed. People would start throwing things. And anything that was really provocative or humorous or radical was embraced or cheered.

I believe that movies are fast becoming antique and dinosauric as a medium. Film is a medium for the over-40s and television has gone the same way. If you're going to look towards the new generation, then of course you're going to have to be a lot more random, spontaneous, irreverent and provocative with your programming.

As an artist, even if you are putting out something really dark and disturbing, that's good because it's opening a discussion. Always in the back of my mind is this thought that the world has to be a better place with you in it.

Some of the most provocative TV that I'm inspired by is in the U.K. You guys take it for granted, but in America, we can't do it.

Jerry Springer' is just kind of the chubby, redneck version of throwing Christians to the lions.

Talk radio around Boston is brutal, and I think that's part of what goes on is that people as they're driving to and from work start listening to these jerks, and I say jerks, because I don't think they know what they're talking about and they're just serving some things up as controversy so they can sell the show to sponsors.

You know, I'd love to do a Maxim shoot. But I'm not going to do it, because that's just stupid to do.

My show on MTV, as outrageous as it was, it was also making a point, which was, 'Look at what we're doing here. This is something that you don't see on television every day, because you're not allowed to do this on television.'

Obscenity is a notable enhancer of life and is suppressed at grave peril to the arts.

Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock ’n’ roll did — challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense anti­human, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation.

Shock always sells. You know? But you could shock in good taste.

There's not a lot of music videos that are totally, totally disturbing.

I'm not easily offended. I have a pretty high tolerance for raunchiness or shock value, so I'm the wrong person to use as a gauge.

Is it possible to do something that that makes an audience uncomfortable, challenges them, makes them see things they're not used to? Here in these films [Salome the play and Salomaybe], I have the opportunity to say something about how I feel about things.

To be honest, I make very controversial films. The films that I've made have been very, very bold choices.

I really like gratuitous nudity. I hate when people go, 'I'll only do it if it makes sense for the movie'. It never makes sense. So I like it - the more gratuitous the better.

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.

If you're doing a column, you kind of have to. Like in the back of Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly has to find something to be mad about. It's not really the way I approach things.

I've seen shows on Showtime, and they're very provocative, if you will, but nothing to the point that's over-the-top or gratuitous.

It had better be quirky or perverse or thoughtful enough so that you hit some chord in them. I mean we've all read pieces where we thought, 'Oh, who gives a damn.'

I feel like I'm a compassionate guy, but I also feel if somebody's grip on life or sanity is so tenuous that a joke in an advice column that usually is nothing but jokes pushes them over the edge, then if not me, it would have been a leaf blowing past them that did it, or something else. You almost have to feel that way, doing this.

I enjoy upsetting the right people. I love poking fun at earnest censors. I want to push the bounds of what can be said on the Internet.

I always expect people to be torn when they see one of my films and divided in some way.

Even if people hate my other movies, and hate me, or whatever, I think from this point of view, Postal is the most important movie after September 11. It's not respecting any edge, any border, any nation, any religion - it's an all-type offender. I think that only if everybody gets a little pissed about something then you will start thinking about your situation.