Epic Prank Forces Film Censors to Watch Paint Dry for 10 Hours
British filmmaker Charlie Lyne found a way to express his displeasure with the U.K.'s film censorship bureaucracy.
The subversive British filmmaker Charlie Lyne was looking for a way to express his displeasure with the U.K.'s film censorship bureaucracy. So he decided to use the website Kickstarter to crowdsource funding for the dullest movie imaginable.
Like the Motion Picture Association of America, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rates and classifies movies. But unlike in the U.S., in the U.K. it's actually illegal to screen unrated movies or sell them on DVD. The BBFC can also ban a movie altogether unless the filmmaker cuts the parts the Board finds offensive.
What's more, the BBFC requires filmmakers to pay for this mandatory exercise in classification. There's an initial fee of 101 pounds ($147) with another 7.09 pounds ($10.35) per minute of footage. Movie trailers cost extra, as does a DVD classification—even if the BBFC already classified the movie for theatrical release.
Because the price is based on a film's run time, the more money Lyne raised, the longer his protest film could be. In the end, 686 backers offered up 5,936 pounds ($8,666.56) and the final film, Paint Drying, is 607 minutes long.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Epic Prank Forces Film Censors to Watch Paint Dry for 10 Hours."