J.When the #MeToo movement seemed as marginalized as activists feared, a new frontier opened: history.
Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, who starred as teenagers in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet, are suing Paramount for more than $500 million for child abuse in a semi-nude scene. increase. The director has assured me that this is not necessary. This was Act 3, Scene 5 – the stars crossed and the beloved hero and heroine awoke after their (secret) wedding night.
To modern eyes, it looks pretty tame. Romeo is naked and looking down, Zeffirelli’s camera remains on his buttocks. Juliet pulls the sheets up almost to her shoulders. However, her breasts are briefly exposed towards the end of the scene.
After all, these are the kids we’re talking about (Whiting was 16, Hussey was 15). Who knows if the traumatic arguments and negotiations that led to this staging of the day, or if parents or chaperones were bullied by the director on set to allow more than they signed up for? is allowed anywhere in At that time, there were no intimate coaches.
These are the wounds remembered, the ones that have been reopened today, and the whole question of informed consent seems to be revived. itself riffs on consent, restraint and maturity. The issue of immature “love buds” can be a legal nightmare for studios. Their historical catalog is a source of income, but it can also be a legal stream.
Romeo and Juliet itself had a footnote in the history of Zeffirelli’s looting, who died in 2019. He famously became obsessed with young Bruce Robinson, who plays Benvolio. In Robinson’s later career, he is said to have partially used Zeffirelli as a model for the lustful Uncle Monty in Withnail and I). It seems that he had an obsession with it.
Past and present filmmaking practices are being challenged – because those involved are now hurting. was permanently scarred by his admission that he didn’t tell the female lead, Maria Schneider, what was going to happen before filming. He spoke with Marlon Brando beforehand. (He waited to make this bland and disrespectful revelation after Schneider’s death in 2011.)
Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl is now suing his new pedophile film ‘Sparta’ after allegations he never explained the subject matter to young non-professional performers aged 9 to 16. caught up in the turmoil. His film “is not the result of me manipulating the actors, misrepresenting the film to them, much less abusing them.”
But when it comes to the past, who knows what will happen? I haven’t expressed any regrets playing a teenager discovering his sexuality in The Blue Lagoon.
Jodie Foster has shown no qualms about playing a sexually exploited girl in Scorsese’s 1976 Taxi Driver. But what about other movies? At the age of 11, Kirsten Dunst interviewed She with her vampire Brad had to kiss her pit. Legal market forces driving new laws. Many are on the Romeo and Juliet lawsuit.
