Romeo & Juliet stars sue over 1968 film’s teen nude scene

[guidomerkinsrules]

I once saw an amateur performance of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in which everyone was wearing Hawaiian shirts and chino shorts and it's been over 20 years and it still sometimes keeps me awake at night.

i wish i could offer sympathy - i've seen way too much bad theatre to offer succor to others

 

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Probably.

Although "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is apparently his most popular play in terms of how many productions of it there are annually. Most probably wouldn't guess that.

I wouldve guessed maybe As You Like It, or the Scottish play…. after Romeo & Juliet of course .

That said, im not really a fan of Shakespeare, though ive seen more productions than i can count.. i just think he’s .. wait for it…. Overrated . .. that said, i once did a monologue of his for a class that i think is really outstanding, the St Crispian’s Day speech from Henry V… “We few, we happy few- we band of brothers”…. i believe it was also done in the movie Major Payne, though i never saw it, only heard that.. in any case, that’s the only one of his works that ever spoke to me, but maybe i just didnt make enough effort .

 

[Loco Hornet Fan]

I wouldve guessed maybe As You Like It, or the Scottish play…. after Romeo & Juliet of course .

That said, im not really a fan of Shakespeare, though ive seen more productions than i can count.. i just think he’s .. wait for it…. Overrated . .. that said, i once did a monologue of his for a class that i think is really outstanding, the St Crispian’s Day speech from Henry V… “We few, we happy few- we band of brothers”…. i believe it was also done in the movie Major Payne, though i never saw it, only heard that.. in any case, that’s the only one of his works that ever spoke to me, but maybe i just didnt make enough effort .

I think you are thinking of the Danny Devito movie, “Renaissance Man”. I like that scene too.

While I do not think Shakespeare is overrated, I won’t bite my thumb at you, sir. Haha.

 

[Loco Hornet Fan]

It's still part of the Louisiana curriculum. We show both it and the Baz Lhurmann version alongside reading the play. I just skip that scene.

The Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet is wild.

 

[Mr. Blue Sky]

I think you are thinking of the Danny Devito movie, “Renaissance Man”. I like that scene too.

Possibly , ive never seen that one either.. and i think those two films were released at around the same time .

 

[Sun Wukong]

The Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet is wild.

This past semester when I taught it, I had one class that hated it and preferred the Zeffirelli version and another that thought it was the most awesome thing ever. Another one just kept asking me what was wrong with everyone back in the 90s.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Another one just kept asking me what was wrong with everyone back in the 90s.

How did you answer that?

 

[Sun Wukong]

How did you answer that?

"Everyone was obsessed with being extreme. You had to be there."

 

[Loco Hornet Fan]

Possibly , ive never seen that one either.. and i think those two films were released at around the same time .

This is the movie/scene I was thinking of. The movie is about Devito teaching Hamlet to a group of army recruits.

 

[tenordas]

I wouldve guessed maybe As You Like It, or the Scottish play…. after Romeo & Juliet of course .

That said, im not really a fan of Shakespeare, though ive seen more productions than i can count.. i just think he’s .. wait for it…. Overrated . .. that said, i once did a monologue of his for a class that i think is really outstanding, the St Crispian’s Day speech from Henry V… “We few, we happy few- we band of brothers”…. i believe it was also done in the movie Major Payne, though i never saw it, only heard that.. in any case, that’s the only one of his works that ever spoke to me, but maybe i just didnt make enough effort .

Henry V is my favourite of all Shakespeare's plays. There are so many, many great lines in it. No, I don't find Shakespeare overrated as you do. However, I will say I'm much more fond of his tragedies and histories than comedies, but that's just because I find farce too unbelievable so it dampens my enjoyment of any play that uses the convention, no matter how well written. Actually, that's part of my problem with R & J. It's basically a conventional farce plot, even though it's not comedy. It's the same goofy premise.

 

[Saintman2884]

Henry V is my favourite of all Shakespeare's plays. There are so many, many great lines in it. No, I don't find Shakespeare overrated as you do. However, I will say I'm much more fond of his tragedies and histories than comedies, but that's just because I find farce too unbelievable so it dampens my enjoyment of any play that uses the convention, no matter how well written. Actually, that's part of my problem with R & J. It's basically a conventional farce plot, even though it's not comedy. It's the same goofy premise.

Is it goofy though really? If anything, the whole backstory surrounding Romeo and Juliet's families despising one another for never-disclosed reasons, its a generational hatred that's been brewing for decades, if not centuries, in business, politics, just coexisting in a modest, Italian Renaissance town is too much to handle. Pretty much the story starts out with one huge, nasty fight breaking out in the market place and its gets so bad that the city's ruling prince and his soldiers tell them,on pain of death, if they don't drop their swords now, he'll kill or exile their arses and that he's getting sick and tired of their families' bitter rivalry and they'd better tell him they'll stop it, end their feud somehow, otherwise any more public duels or fights in his city results in exile or death. Both families hate and despise each other, even the cousins or nephews, then the son and daughter from each family meet, actually take the time to get to know each other and fall in love, despite their respective families' ignorance.

It's a fatal morality tale that shows how two large families hatred for each other, tends to be generational and the further it descends down the genealogical timeline, it becomes toxic and counter-productive. At the very end of the play, Capua's prince scolds and reminds both heads of each family that their long-simmering, disdain and scorn led to their son and daughter's deaths, as well as Tybalt (a good example of male chauvinism and toxic masculinity, IMHO).

Honestly, there are similar tales expressed in the Bible. The circumstances are very different, but the world's first murder happened (Cain and Abel) because their parents assigned them different wives and Cain was more in love with Abel's wife, who rejected his advances, which leads to the breaking point where God accepts Abel's sacrifice of lamb but not Cain's offering of wheat, vegetables, or plants( in the Old Testament Bible, a grain offering is just as legitimately acceptable as a lamb sacrifice) except Cain's selection was kind of a half-arse, second rate offering and God doesn't accept half-arse anything, much less when he knows you can easily afford to do and give better. God even went to Cain and told he wasnt playing favorites, and reminded him that he rejected his offering because it was third-rate and telling a murderous, egotistical sociopath why he's wrong usually doesn't end with a happy ending and it lead to Cain luring his brother out onto the field, probably not intending to kill him(I don't think Cain's murder was motive) but to give him a nice arse-kicking, that went way too far and he ended up killing him. If you examine Cain's initial reactions after seeing his brother's dead body, he was sorry and filled with regret. He even tried to bury Abel's body. Those aren't the actions of a meticulous, premeditated murderer.

 

[tenordas]

Is it goofy though really? If anything, the whole backstory surrounding Romeo and Juliet's families despising one another for never-disclosed reasons, its a generational hatred that's been brewing for decades, if not centuries, in business, politics, just coexisting in a modest, Italian Renaissance town is too much to handle. Pretty much the story starts out with one huge, nasty fight breaking out in the market place and its gets so bad that the city's ruling prince and his soldiers tell them,on pain of death, if they don't drop their swords now, he'll kill or exile their arses and that he's getting sick and tired of their families' bitter rivalry and they'd better tell him they'll stop it, end their feud somehow, otherwise any more public duels or fights in his city results in exile or death. Both families hate and despise each other, even the cousins or nephews, then the son and daughter from each family meet, actually take the time to get to know each other and fall in love, despite their respective families' ignorance.

It's a fatal morality tale that shows how two large families hatred for each other, tends to be generational and the further it descends down the genealogical timeline, it becomes toxic and counter-productive. At the very end of the play, Capua's prince scolds and reminds both heads of each family that their long-simmering, disdain and scorn led to their son and daughter's deaths, as well as Tybalt (a good example of male chauvinism and toxic masculinity, IMHO).

Honestly, there are similar tales expressed in the Bible. The circumstances are very different, but the world's first murder happened (Cain and Abel) because their parents assigned them different wives and Cain was more in love with Abel's wife, who rejected his advances, which leads to the breaking point where God accepts Abel's sacrifice of lamb but not Cain's offering of wheat, vegetables, or plants( in the Old Testament Bible, a grain offering is just as legitimately acceptable as a lamb sacrifice) except Cain's selection was kind of a half-arse, second rate offering and God doesn't accept half-arse anything, much less when he knows you can easily afford to do and give better. God even went to Cain and told he wasnt playing favorites, and reminded him that he rejected his offering because it was third-rate and telling a murderous, egotistical sociopath why he's wrong usually doesn't end with a happy ending and it lead to Cain luring his brother out onto the field, probably not intending to kill him(I don't think Cain's murder was motive) but to give him a nice arse-kicking, that went way too far and he ended up killing him. If you examine Cain's initial reactions after seeing his brother's dead body, he was sorry and filled with regret. He even tried to bury Abel's body. Those aren't the actions of a meticulous, premeditated murderer.

Yes, it's goofy. Not the morality plot in general, but the details.
Hey, let's fake your death with this potion, then you can skip town. Hey, here's a better idea: just leave town in the first place.

Goodness, I just can't seem to get word to Romeo about my overly contrived plan to fix things. Well, let's go through with it anyway. Hey, here's an idea. Why don't you just TELL Romeo's friends who know where he is what you're doing?

Stupid farce, with writer-controlled "problems" driving the situation to the conclusion he wants instead of letting characters drive what happens. Hate it. I won't even go on about about the "I can't live if living is without you" ending. It's just cringy stupid.

For my money, the play should end with the Prince banning or executing the lot of them after Mercutio and Tybalt die. Mercutio is the only interesting character in the entire play so Shakespeare would have been better off stopping the play right there. It also wouldn't be needlessly long that way.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Spoiler alert: Romeo and Juliet does not have a happy ending. But Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of the Shakespeare play did – at least until recently.

The 1968 movie was a huge commercial success and became a secondary school fixture. Its stars, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, even briefly dated – a dream come true publicity-wise.

But now it has emerged that the pair are suing the studio, Paramount, for $500m over Zeffirelli’s handling of a scene in which both actors, then 16 and 17, briefly appeared partially naked. According to the complaint, the actors “were told by Mr Zeffirelli that they must act in the nude or the picture will fail”.

As with the music industry, cinema has tended to gloss over such incidents with the “It was a different time” excuse. This could be seen as a concerted effort to keep the lid on what many suspect to be quite a can of worms. Hussey and Whiting’s lawsuit could represent the long-dreaded can-opener.

The movie industry, especially its output in the late 20th century, is now up for reappraisal, and maybe it needs it. What, for example, should we make of Jodie Foster, at the age of 12, portraying a girl forced into sex work in Taxi Driver?

Or Jenny Agutter’s naked swim in 1971’s Walkabout, when she was just 16? The scene was filmed with Agutter’s knowledge and consent, and neither Foster nor Agutter has expressed regret or resentment about these roles, but at what age should an actor be considered mature enough to have given that consent? And should they be allowed to change their minds at a later date?

Or how about Nastassja Kinski? When she was 13, German auteur Wim Wenders cast her in 1975’s Wrong Move, in which she appears topless in a sexualised situation (as an adult, Kinski worked with Wenders again in Paris, Texas and Faraway, So Close). Aged 14, she was depicted fully nude in Hammer horror To the Devil a Daughter, co-starring Christopher Lee.

At 17, she was in the sex comedy Stay As You Are, in which she played the regularly naked teen lover of Marcello Mastroianni, who was then in his mid-50s (Lolita-style “forbidden” romances seem to come with this territory).

In 1997, Kinski said: “If I had had somebody to protect me or if I had felt more secure about myself, I would not have accepted certain things. Nudity things. And inside it was just tearing me apart.”………

But, like the “It was a different time” argument, the “This was Europe” line doesn’t hold a lot of water, not least because US cinema was also using young actors in sexually suggestive content. Brooke Shields was photographed naked for Playboy-owned Sugar and Spice magazine when she was 10.

In 1980, aged 14, she starred in a controversially sexual ad campaign for Calvin Klein jeans (“You wanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing”).

In between came her breakout movie: Pretty Baby, in which she played the 12-year-old daughter of a sex worker in a 1917 New Orleans bordello. The director was Louis Malle, admittedly European, but the story was initiated and co-written by Polly Platt, an American.

Platt was inspired by the work of EJ Bellocq, a photographer who portrayed the red-light district of New Orleans, but also by the exploitative 1970s film industry. Shields’s character has a sexual relationship with Bellocq (played by Keith Carradine) and poses for him naked…….

‘My first day was a sex scene’: the disturbing history of teen actors and nudity

From Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver to Brooke Shields in The Blue Lagoon, are films that used teen actors for sexual roles heading for a reckoning? As Paramount is sued over Romeo and Juliet, we look at the scenes cinema and TV might want to forget

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Olivia Hussey, star of 1968 Romeo and Juliet film, dies aged 73

Golden Globe-winning actor ‘lived a life fu

www.theguardian.com