Le Pétomane - Legacy

Legacy

Le Pétomane left an enduring legacy and has inspired a number of artistic works. These include several musicals based on his life, such as The Fartiste (awarded Best Musical at the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival) and Seth Rozin's A Passing Wind which was premiered at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts in 2011. In addition, Le Pétomane was added to David Lee's 2007 reworked revival of the 1953 Broadway play Can-Can, which had originally been written by Abe Burroughs and Cole Porter. The updated play, staged at the Pasadena Playhouse, featured musical theatre actor Robert Yacko as the fartiste, with sound effects provided by the band's trombone and piccolo players. More recently, the re-released works of English toilet humour specialist Ivor Biggun include "Southern Breeze", a song about a "Famous French Farteur" who describes in rhyme a stroll through a farmyard, accompanied by appropriate farting noises.

Los Angeles-based Sherbourne Press published Jean Nohain and F. Caradec's Le Pétomane as a small hardcover English language edition in 1967. Due to its ‘sensitive’ nature, the usual national publicity venues shied away, some claiming that an author was needed for interviews (both elderly writers lived in France). However, ‘behind the curtain’ acceptance created a buzz within the national radio/TV promotional circuit and word-of-mouth discussion kept the book in stores for several years. Dorset Press, a division of Barnes & Noble, reissued the book in 1993. Comics artist Lee Marrs includes a short visual biography of Le Pétomane in her 1976 comic The Compleat Fart and Other Body Emissions. Ricky Jay discusses Le Pétomane in his book Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women. Jim Dawson included a chapter on Le Pétomane in his book Who Cut the Cheese? (Ten Speed Press, 1999) and a chapter on the various films about Le Pétomane in Blame It on the Dog (2006). Simon & Schuster released a 2008 children's book about his life called The Fartiste written by Kathleen Krull & Paul Brewer and illustrated by Boris Kulikov. The Baby Killers, a 2010 steampunk novel by Jay Lake from PS Publishing recasts Le Pétomane as a French secret agent. Pujol is a primary character in Sarah Bynum's novel Madeleine is Sleeping.

The character has been portrayed several times in film. In 1979 Ian MacNaughton made a short humorous film, written by Galton and Simpson called Le Pétomane, based on Pujol's story and starring veteran comic actor Leonard Rossiter. The 1983 Italian movie Il Petomane, directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile and starring Ugo Tognazzi, gives a poetic rendition of the character, contrasting his deep longing for normalcy with the condition of 'freak' to which his act relegated him. The 1998 documentary Le Pétomane by Igor Vamos examines Joseph Pujol's place in history through archival films (none of which actually include him), historical documents, photographs, recreations and fake or tongue-in-cheek interviews.

Other appearances include Le Pétomane: Parti Avec Le Vent (Le Pétomane: Gone With The Wind), a 2005 short film based on Pujol's life, and in Baz Luhrmann's 2001 film Moulin Rouge! played by Australian actor Keith Robinson. Other references to Le Pétomane include Mel Brooks's 1974 film Blazing Saddles; Kevin Gilbert's The Shaming of the True; the 1984 college romp film Up the Creek, directed by Robert Butler, in which the four protagonists represent Lepetomane University in an inter-collegiate river raft race; Kinky Friedman's 1999 novel Spanking Watson; and John Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise.