The recent attempt by conservatives and Republican politicians to change the subject away from their own anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies on guns was a cynical way to say something, let alone anything, when confronted with a pile of dead bodies. Whether they will ever admit it or not, the destruction and suffering on the ground laid waste not only to innocent lives but to backward, right-wing xenophobia and being the whores of the National Rifle Association (NRA), on both a moral and logical level. However, that’s been true during multiple massacres ... for decades. But the base of the Republican Party does not care whether their ideology makes any sense. Whether anything will change is an open question with a grim outlook for having a favorable answer anytime soon. But the overall reaction of politicians, and the media as well, is also part of a disgusting pattern.
That pattern is a history of the media being spurred by con men posing as leaders into going on a vast quest for excuses and fear-mongering when white people kill. And this kind of flawed introspection ONLY happens when white people kill in order to rationalize the shooters as “victims” of cultural aspects controlled by areas of society usually tied to progressive politics. That's the reason we've had years of scapegoating video games, rap music, Hollywood, or whatever boogeyman they can find to not admit there are problems with racist and sexist assholes who also happen to be part of the Republican base. The fact violent crime has dropped like a stone since the 1990s, a period where video games and access to more forms of media flourished, makes no difference. When, over the past four years, have facts and science mattered? What matters is a bloody shirt to wave in order to motivate an ideological side.
It’s the same area of simplistic fallacies which hold that foreigners dislike America “because of our freedom” and respond to incidents of police brutality with: “What about black-on-black crime?” When brown people are involved in murders or terrorism, ever notice how all of the speculation about "root causes" is nonexistent? The implication from that lack of introspection in the media is this "is just the way they are," so we don't need to make excuses in order to let portions of the public off the hook and feel better.
About a week ago, Universal Pictures pulled the release of The Hunt after the film became a target of right-wing outrage culture in the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. The movie comes from Blumhouse Productions—the same studio behind social-political horror movies like Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us, as well as The Purge franchise—and was co-written by Damon Lindelof, who made his name with Lost and whose upcoming adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen reportedly refashions the story around issues of police brutality and white supremacy. It’s a modern takeoff on Richard Connell’s 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game which was originally titled “Red State v. Blue State,” and depicts a group of elite, wealthy liberals who kidnap and hunt “deplorables” for their own gratification. After the mass shootings, and with no readily available good target to deflect attention away from their own racism and devotion to gun nuts, the conservative brain trust decided to go after a film they hadn’t seen, created with a script they hadn’t read, claiming it would inspire violent acts in order to stoke outrage and keep the Republican base fearful of everything, whether it be movies with women in leading roles, movies with people of color in leading roles, or any movies with a message which calls out being a dumbass.
According to news from over the weekend, Blumhouse still wants to release the movie, even after negative test screenings and death threats to the people involved with the production once Hollywood and the film became a target of Trump’s Twitter tirades and conservative ire. But I thought the overall issue and situation, where baseless outrage fuels calls for censorship and reinforces stupidity, is an interesting one to examine within the context of controversial films.
From Gene Maddaus and Brent Lang at Variety:
Craig Zobel, director of “The Hunt,” hopes that the controversial political thriller will eventually be seen by audiences, and argues that its message has been misrepresented in media reports. Zobel spoke for the first time since Universal canceled the film’s release on Aug. 10, in the wake of a series of mass shootings and amid a mounting conservative backlash. The film depicts a group of elites who hunt “deplorables” for sport. Fox News commentators have condemned it as “sick” and “awful.”
“If I believed this film could incite violence, I wouldn’t have made it,” he wrote. He said that the film does not take sides politically, and that his goal was instead to satirize “both sides” of the partisan divide. “Our ambition was to poke at both sides of the aisle equally,” he wrote. “We seek to entertain and unify, not enrage and divide. It is up to the viewers to decide what their takeaway will be.” ... Zobel said the film has been misunderstood. He said it was actually about partisanship, and how both sides fail to fully hear their opponents’ views. “I wanted to make a fun, action thriller that satirized this moment in our culture — where we jump to assume we know someone’s beliefs because of which ‘team’ we think they’re on… and then start shouting at them,” he wrote. “This rush to judgment is one of the most relevant problems of our time.”
“The Hunt” has become a rare black eye for Blumhouse, one of the most successful production companies in the movie business. Founder Jason Blum has had a golden touch with genre films like “Get Out” and “The First Purge,” which traffic in edgy political themes … Universal has not screened the film for critics, so the political content of the final cut is still largely a matter of conjecture. An early draft of the script obtained by Variety makes clear that the original intention was to depict working-class conservatives as the heroes. They are kidnapped and hunted by “liberal elites,” one of whom says “Climate change is real” before blowing his victim away. One of the good guys talks about the “Deep State,” and another fantasizes about going on “Hannity” to expose the conspiracy.
The script was written by Nick Cuse, a 29-year-old Harvard grad, and Damon Lindelof, a veteran TV producer and a prolific donor to Democratic presidential candidates. Cuse is a registered Republican who nevertheless gave to Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2017. He was a writer on Lindelof’s HBO show “The Leftovers,” and is the son of producer Carlton Cuse, who ran “Lost” with Lindelof. Blum is also a generous supporter of Democrats, and has made no secret of his disdain for the president. The movie’s extreme gore would have made it controversial anyway in the aftermath of the El Paso and Dayton shootings, but its political themes — however misunderstood — made it radioactive. According to the Daily Beast, Trump groused at the White House about “the movie” made by “people who hate Trump.”
Time marches on, and so does a culture’s viewpoints on myriad issues. There are many examples of popular works of the past which when viewed today have aspects that would never be tolerated by current standards. These might be movies or books people enjoyed as children, and then as an adult there might be one line or scene where it’s like: “Hey, I can’t believe that’s actually in there.” Or maybe the characters and their characterizations are depicted in ways which may or may not have seemed sexist or racist at the time, but have rather unfortunate implications when analyzed today. These works can be viewed as a window into the time period in which they were created, and the norms and attitudes which dominated at the time of production.
It’s also interesting to think about the movies that have incited protests over whether their consumption by the public was appropriate, or if their artistic merit is now outweighed by their offensiveness. And, of course, the question of whether they deserve their place in the hall of shame? Or are these instances of an overreaction?
In almost all of the cases listed below, the moves to either censor or limit their availability are based on personal tastes and ideas of morality. Therefore, it’s a situation where a group of people got together and said because they didn’t want to watch these things, no one should watch ‘em.
- Peter Greenaway's 1989 film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover begins with Albert Spica (Michaell Gambon) beating up a man, ripping off his clothes, smearing dog excrement on his face and chest, then urinating on him ... and from there, things get worse. Upon release, the film encountered controversy because of its depictions of sex and violence. In fact, it's one of the reasons the MPAA instituted the NC-17 rating, after it refused to give the film an R-rating for its release in the United States and the backlash that decision received from film critics. That left the studio which distributed the film—Miramax—with the choice of releasing the film with no rating at all or an X-rating. This sort of choice is the film industry equivalent of choosing between being shot or stabbed.
- Based on the novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange was originally given an X-rating in the United States. Stanley Kubrick cut out about 30 seconds of sexual content to secure an R-rating, but the film was withdrawn from the United Kingdom after some copycat violence and threats against Kubrick and his family. It wasn't officially available in the U.K. again—in theaters or on video—until 2000, a year after Kubrick's death. A Clockwork Orange is generally lauded today as one of Kubrick's masterpieces, with Anthony Burgess' story playing with themes of free will and individuality—even if it's the individuality of a sadist—versus the conditioning of the state toward "goodness." However, the movie's critical acclaim hasn't always been so. Noted film critic Pauline Kael called the film "pornographic" in her review, where she also accused Kubrick of "making the attacked less human than their attackers." The film is also an interesting case of creator backlash, given the attitude Burgess came to have toward the film and Stanley Kubrick. Initially, Burgess defended both the book and film from attacks about its decency. But over time his viewpoint about the film adaptation and Kubrick eventually soured. Reportedly, the story was inspired by the assault and rape of Burgess' wife. Burgess expected the audience to be repulsed by Alex de Large and the Droogs, but instead people began emulating them and made them a part of pop culture.
Anthony Burgess: We all suffer from the popular desire to make the known notorious. The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d’esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation, and the same may be said of [D.H.] Lawrence and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
- Over at the A.V. Club, they once had an article which likened the character of Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind to Walter White from Breaking Bad, with the character arguably being one of the first popular female anti-heroes. For an early 20th century novel, the story is in some ways progressive in presenting a complex female protagonist who has goals and is willing to do whatever necessary to achieve them. However, it is the story’s depiction of race which makes things uncomfortable. Gone with the Wind filters O’Hara’s story through a revisionist view of Southern victimhood, where the plantation way of life is under assault and slavery is given a somewhat flattering portrayal. Still, the film adaptation of Gone with the Wind is nowhere near as objectionable as how things are depicted in the novel on which it’s based, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Margaret Mitchell in 1937. This tendency to romanticize chattel slavery into a genteel aristocracy of the Old South definitely represented prevailing moods and attitudes of the time. And those issues are still with us today every time an argument over a Confederate monument occurs. In 2017, theaters in Memphis, Tennessee and Albuquerque, New Mexico canceled screening of the film due to insensitivity to segments of the public.
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell’s sweeping tale of the South between the antebellum and Reconstruction eras, is a work divided against itself. Its treatment of race is nauseating, a dismaying reminder of how recently blacks could be presented as inferior with essentially no controversy. At the same time, in Scarlett O’Hara’s vicious maturation from pre-war naivety to a ruthless titan of industry, it features the strongest and most complex woman in American entertainment, along with a view of gender politics without many equals today.
It’s this friction, between what society has moved away from and what it has yet to fully embrace, that makes the book so difficult and necessary to grapple with. Exhilarating moments of Scarlett head-butting the patriarchy are followed by depictions of animalistic freed slaves unleashing waves of rape, creating a kind of whiplash for offensiveness that’s difficult to square.
- Over the years, there have been various arguments about racism and sexism in various classic Disney films, ranging from the crows in Dumbo to the Indians in Peter Pan. However, only one Disney film has never been released on home video, DVD, Blu-ray, or to stream in the United States because of its perceived racial insensitivity. The film is also the origin of the Disney song "Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah," which won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Song. Set in the Deep South after the Civil War, Song of the South is based on the "Uncle Remus" collection of African-American folktales compiled by Joel Chandler Harris in the late 1800s, which tell of the adventures of Br'er Rabbit and his friends. However, concerns over the subject matter have resulted in the movie being off the market in the United States for years, leaving it locked in the Disney vault, even though at least some have argued the film should be released to “talk about what it was and where it came from and why it came out.”
- Written by Harmony Korine (Gummo, Spring Breakers) and directed by Larry Clark, Kids was extremely controversial upon release. It depicts the lives of New York City teenagers as they deal with the consequences of sex acts, as well as alcohol and drug use. The movie begins with Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) convincing a 12-year-old girl to give up her virginity. The movie’s main story follows Jenny (Chloë Sevigny) as she searches for Telly after she tests HIV positive. Kids was called exploitative and borderline child pornography by critics. Feminist scholar bell hooks accused the film of being sexist with abusive behavior towards women. After the MPAA stuck the film with an NC-17, Harvey and Bob Weinstein—then the co-chairmen of Miramax—had to buy the film in order to get it released. At the time, Miramax Films was owned by the Walt Disney Company, and Disney's policy was refusal to release unrated or NC-17 films.
- Triumph of the Will haunted Leni Riefenstahl until the day she died. It is widely considered one of the first and best-known uses of propaganda in film history. Riefenstahl's film chronicles the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, and promotes Germany's return as a global power under the Nazis. For decades Riefenstahl claimed she was just a documentarian chronicling events. However, she could hardly be called anything close to an "objective filmmaker," since Triumph of the Will was financed by the Nazi government, commissioned by Adolf Hitler himself, and completed with the full cooperation of all involved, with the rally planned around Riefenstahl's filming. Triumph of the Will is also notable for its influence. Many of the techniques used by Riefenstahl have been borrowed by filmmakers and political campaigns. For example, George Lucas uses some of Riefenstahl's aesthetics in Star Wars (aka Episode IV: A New Hope). The ending of Star Wars is a direct lift from the scene in Triumph of the Will where Hitler, Himmler, and Viktor Lutze lay a wreath at the memorial for President Hindenburg. In Ridley Scott's Gladiator, the entry of Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) into Rome mimics Hitler's arrival in Nuremberg in Triumph of the Will.
Roger Ebert: Riefenstahl is at pains to insist she was never a member of the Nazi Party. Her position has always been that she was an artist, working in a vacuum. The tragedy of her career, from her view, is that "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia" gained such fame, and were so closely identified with Nazism, that she was never able to finish another film. There were other documentaries about the Nazi rallies, but nobody remembers the others; only hers, because it was so good... There is no mention in her films of anti-Semitism, she points out. She did not know until after the war about Hitler's genocidal policies against the Jews. She was a naive artist, unsophisticated about politics, detached from Nazi party officials with the exception of Hitler, her friend - but not a close friend. She was concerned only with images, not ideas. And so on. But it has been pointed out that the very absence of anti-Semitism in "Triumph of the Will" looks like a calculation; excluding the central motif of almost all of Hitler's public speeches must have been a deliberate decision to make the film more efficient as propaganda. Nor could it have been easy for a film professional working in Berlin to remain unaware of the disappearance of all of the Jews in the movie industry.
- Sam Peckinpah's 1971 film Straw Dogs is considered one of his best, but it was a tad controversial upon release—so much so that it was banned in the United Kingdom for a good many years. It tells the story of David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman), a timid American mathematician, who wants to escape what he perceives to be the increasing violence of American city life. Sumner and his wife Amy (Susan George) relocate to her native village of Wakely, Cornwall, in the southwest corner of England. However, almost from the get-go, David and his wife become targets for the locals, which include Amy's former lover. Its most controversial sequence is the ambiguity in a scene in which Amy is raped. After initially resisting, Amy appears to enjoy the rape at points. Because of it, and the violent rampage which ends the movie, the film faced censorship bans in England for 30 years.
- Kevin Smith's first film, Clerks, which cost all of $27,575 and was shot in the convenience store where Smith worked, was originally given an NC-17 rating by the MPAA. The NC-17 was based solely on the language used in the film, which includes a memorable scene about “37 dicks,” where a boyfriend finds out his girlfriend’s oral sex number, since there are no acts of violence or depictions of sexual activity.
- The original 1978 iteration of I Spit On Your Grave was, and arguably still is, a very controversial grindhouse film, having been banned in a lot of countries. The controversy largely stems from a very graphic rape scene, and how you interpret the film. Is it a movie portraying the horrors of rape, and the revenge of a strong woman that's not going to take it? Or is it misogynistic trash that titillates its audience with sadism against a female protagonist? This has long been the dichotomy of the 1970s and 1980s-era exploitation films. Some feminists saw sexism in the T&A or the acts of violence directed at the female characters. However, the other side of the argument is some of the exploitation films were also the first to have strong female characters that weren't dependent on men to "save" them. A 2009 Los Angeles Times article on Feminism and Exploitation films quoted feminist scholars discussing how 1970s exploitation films feature some of the first aggressive, assertive female characters. However, not everyone agreed. For example, with I Spit On Your Grave, Roger Ebert wrote a scathing review, calling it "an expression of the most diseased and perverted darker human natures.” Back in 1980, Ebert and Gene Siskel devoted an entire show to "Women in Danger" films. During it, Siskel proposed the theory that these films were a reaction to the gains made by the women's movement, and fulfill a fantasy for some men of seeing a woman cowering and being "punished" whenever they have sex or do something un-ladylike.
- There is a reason the word "sadism" is derived from the Marquis de Sade's name. Salo (or The 120 days of Sodom) is from Italian poet, novelist, painter, and director Pier Paolo Pasolini and based on the novel Les 120 journées de Sodome, written in 1785 by the Marquis de Sade, which tells the story of four libertines who kidnap a group of teenagers, take them to a chateau, and subject them to four months of the most depraved torture the libertines can imagine. The film has been controversial from the time it saw the light of day, and is still banned in many countries. However, the film does have fans. A 2001 Village Voice critics poll ranked it as the 89th greatest film of the 20th century.
- When you think of epics about the Roman Empire, the brain trust of Penthouse magazine is exactly who you want in charge of the film. Caligula is primarily infamous for trying to straddle the line between being high art and a porn film, and failing miserably at both. Banned in Atlanta, Georgia, prints of the film were seized in Boston, before a municipal court ruled it was not obscene. The original script for Caligula was written by Gore Vidal—who later disowned the film—and was directed by Tinto Brass. However, the film was produced by Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse magazine, who had final cut. Unhappy with Brass' product, he brought in someone else to recut the film and added in hardcore sex scenes (with some of them not making any sense to what little plot the movie had). This led to many different versions of the film. There are reportedly nine different cuts of Caligula out there somewhere, and with each of them you're still left pondering how a movie with good actors (Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, John Gielgud), and gratuitous amounts of sex and violence can be so damn boring.
It’s tempting to blame most of Caligula’s flaws on Guccione’s meddling, and there’s little doubt that his additions—including, most infamously, a five-minute lesbian sex scene that doesn’t have anything to do with anything beyond being a five-minute lesbian sex scene—were distracting, pointless, and, by the end, irritatingly dull. During a late-movie orgy sequence, I’d swear I saw the same woman giving the same guy the same blowjob at least six times. Apart from ruining any sense of narrative momentum, the constant assault of fuckery just gets old. It starts as shocking, becomes compelling in a Rube-Goldberg-meets-the-Marquis-De-Sade kind of way, but by the time you hit your third finger-bang, the magic is gone.
- This is the official trailer for Todd Solondz' film Happiness. It is quite possibly one of the most misleading film trailers ever made, since you would think the movie is a romantic comedy from what's presented. It is most decidedly NOT that. The film is actually a pitch black dark comedy that revolves around the lives of people connected to three sisters (Jane Adams, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Cynthia Stevenson), and is about the pursuit of happiness. Except the happiness the characters pursue involves the fulfillment of their various psychological—and criminal—dysfunctions. The most infamous scene in Happiness is one in which a pedophile father (Dylan Baker) confesses his crimes to his young son, and it's ambiguous as to whether Solondz is going for the creepiness of the scene or trying to get laughs out of child molestation.
- Warriors, come out to plaaaaaayyyy! Based on the Anabasis by Xenophon, Walter Hill's The Warriors tells the story of a Coney Island street gang trying to get back home after being framed for the murder of a gang leader—"Can you dig it?"—and being hunted by every other gang in New York City. The film became controversial after release because of acts of vandalism and three murders associated with viewers who had seen the movie. In response, Paramount pulled advertising for the film, and allowed some theater owners to get out of their contractual obligations to show the movie.
- Revenge of the Nerds is one of the big teen comedies of the 1980s, but it has a scene which plays terribly and is very problematic with modern reassessments, since it seems as if no one who watched this the first time around thought anything of one of the main protagonists performing oral sex on the main antagonist's girlfriend through deception (i.e., rape). And the way the film justifies it is with Lewis (Robert Carradine) being so good at oral that Betty (Julia Montgomery) doesn't care a guy she barely knows has just raped her. In fact, she falls in love with him. In a lot of films of the 1970s and 1980s, there's a weird trope where the way the uptight female antagonist is redeemed is through sex. Basically all the female antagonist needs is for someone to pleasure her properly and she stops being an antagonist and so uptight. Although, just like the scene in Revenge of the Nerds, a lot of these characters and the sex border on or actually cross into rape fantasies. And it arguably speaks to the societal norms of the time. Back to the Future also has some of this weirdness. The film’s ending posits George McFly (Crispin Glover) would hire Biff (Thomas F. Wilson) to wax his car even after he attempted to rape his now-wife (Lea Thompson) back in high school. However, if one goes back even further, remember the original plan was for Marty (Michael J. Fox) to fake sexually assaulting HIS OWN MOTHER and traumatizing her so George could play the hero.
Jeff Kanew (director of Revenge of the Nerds): I've heard [criticism] a lot this year because of the #MeToo movement—that's considered a form of rape because it's sex under false pretenses. At the time, it was considered sort of a switch. She doesn't resist and scream and say "my God, get away from me!" Her first line was, "You're that nerd, oh, that's wonderful." That excuses it. But in a way, it's not excusable. If it were my daughter, I probably wouldn't like it.
- The Last Temptation of Christ is probably the ultimate "we haven't seen it, but we're going to protest it" film. Based on the 1960 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, Martin Scorsese's film tells the story of Jesus Christ's life and crucifixion, except in a much more human way than is normally done. What is the last temptation of Christ? A "normal" life with a human family. Fundamentalists objected strongly to the film, calling it blasphemous. However, the film is a fairly flattering depiction of Christ's story. It still recognizes Jesus as the son of God, but instead of treating Jesus like a comic-book superhero, the movie treats Jesus with the dignity of being a real person. But that didn’t cut it with a lot of people. At least three theater chains, controlling 3,600 screens between them, refused to take The Last Temptation of Christ. Also, individual cities such as Savannah, Georgia, New Orleans, Louisiana, Oklahoma City, and Santa Ana, California, moved to ban the film.
- D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation is a supremely innovative and influential film from the silent era. Considered by almost every film historian to be a seminal work for innovations in movie-making, the 1915 film is also a movie which makes excuses for every degradation white southerners employed in denying their black neighbors basic human dignity, while defending the Ku Klux Klan. Per Roger Ebert, it’s a great movie which literally “argues for evil.”
- During the "porn chic" period of the 1970s, it was thought porn films might one day become as mainstream as any other genre of film. One of the porn films that caught the public's attention was Deep Throat, starring Linda Lovelace (i.e., the pseudonym of Linda Susan Boreman). It centers on a woman (Lovelace) who learns that her clitoris isn't where it's supposed to be, but inside her throat. She can only achieve orgasm by performing the act named in the film's title. The film made a huge profit for its investors, who may or may not have been the Colombo crime family. And the notoriety of this and other porn films led to something of an alliance between cultural conservatives and some feminists who led a backlash against the genre as immoral and misogynistic. Years later, Boreman would testify before the Meese Commission denouncing the film. It should be noted the after-effects of the Reems prosecution still exist in some ways. The prosecution was brought in Memphis, Tennessee, on charges of conspiracy to distribute obscenity across state lines. As recently as a few years ago, many of the online porn distributors would not ship products to Memphis or any of the surrounding zip codes.
- Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct was controversial not only for Sharon Stone's "crotch shot," but also with gay groups who disliked the portrayal of a bisexual woman as a psychopathic serial killer. Some protesters stood in front of movie theaters with signs giving away the identity of the film's killer.
- Rated X upon its release, Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris tells the story of an affair between an American widower and an engaged Parisian woman (Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider). Brando received a Best Actor Academy Award nomination in 1973 for this film, and Bertolucci was nominated for Best Director. The film's depiction of sexuality, and the turmoil (I guess that's a good word for it) of the relationship made people argue whether it was erotic art or pornography—and whether it mattered. Probably the most controversial scene deals with Brando’s character using a stick of butter to anally rape Schneider’s character, which according to Bertolucci himself was planned by him and Brando and NOT done with the consent of Schneider, who was only 19 years old when the movie was shot. Schneider in 2007 stated she felt “humiliated and raped” by Brando and Bertolucci, and since Bertolucci’s admission that he wanted to get Schneider’s reaction as “a girl, not an actress,” opinions about the director, Brando, and the film have worsened.
The sex in Last Tango In Paris has generally been described as “simulated.” But that’s a hard concept to parse when a 19-year-old actress is being talked into an off-script, “simulated” rape scene—involving her pants being ripped off and her face pressed into the floor—by two powerful older men, working together to conceal information from her to maximize her humiliation and pain. “I felt humiliated, and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci,” said Schneider, who refused to do nude scenes after her experience shooting Last Tango and who died of cancer in 2011. “After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take.”
- Heaven’s Gate was an infamous debacle which contributed to the collapse of United Artists and basically ruined director Michael Cimino's career. Cimino was coming off the success of The Deer Hunter, which had won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director in 1979, and decided on a Western epic loosely based on the Johnson County War. What was originally a film budgeted for $12 million eventually ended up costing $42 million which, if adjusted for inflation, would be well over $100 million in 2014 dollars because of blown schedules and production delays. A street built to Cimino's precise specifications was torn down and rebuilt because it "didn't look right." Cimino wanted the street to be six feet wider. When the set construction boss said it would be cheaper to tear down one side and move it back six feet, Cimino insisted that both sides be dismantled, moved back three feet and then reassembled. Cimino shot more than 1.3 million feet (nearly 220 hours) of footage, costing approximately $200,000 per day. Heaven's Gate earned less than $3 million domestically when it was released. The original cut of the film Cimino delivered to the studio was more than five hours long. Executives at United Artists cajoled Cimino into delivering a version of the film that was a little under four hours for the movie's premiere. After the premiere was met with disastrous reviews, UA pulled the film and Heaven's Gate was cut again for a final theatrical cut of about 2.5 hours. Of course, if you cut over 50 percent of a film's initial run-time, there's probably gonna be pacing problems and plot holes. Heaven's Gate is also the reason why the American Humane Association (AHA) monitors animal activities on all movie sets. In Cimino's pursuit for authenticity, four horses were reportedly killed and others seriously injured while shooting the battle scene, as well as allegations that other animals were slaughtered for various scenes. The AHA picketed the film and asked the public to boycott it. The uproar led to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) authorizing the AHA to monitor the use of animals in film production.