----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On 3/31/95 Doug Simpson wrote with respect to censorhip of PRIEST: > I think the director hit it correctly (Antonia Bird): >"Apparently, bare male bottoms are not acceptable in the United >States of America. So we had to remove them. And this makes me >laugh, because I come from a country [England] that has no problems >with that, but banned Natural Born Killers for its violence. You >know, we don't think violence is acceptable-- but we think sex is >great. You guys [America] like violence and hate sex!" > I guess that says that. Doug Simpson ===================================== "...we don't think violence is acceptable..." Right! This from the country that historically gave us Jacobean tragedy, bear-baiting, flogging, keel-hauling, drawing-and-quartering, press gangs, Henry VIII and the persecution of Catholics, Oliver Cromwell, taxation without representation, the slave trade, transportation to Australia, petty theft as a capital crime, debtors' prison, the British Empire's sack of the Third World, the World War I exploitation of Anzacs as cannon fodder... and more recently gave us the Troubles in Ireland, the Falkland War, mods and rockers, punk rock, THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, PINK FLOYD'S THE WALL (the movie), A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (movie and book), Monty Python (I'm not disparaging them, only pointing out that their humor is often very violent), the Kray brothers, and football riots. Just a few items off the top of my head in no particular order. "...but we think sex is great." Judging from the British tabloids and the business cards plastered in the phone booths near the BFI, one could reasonably add "mainly if it involves the Royals or serious bondage and discipline." But that perhaps would be rude. --Richard J. Leskosky (an Anglophile but an objective one) Richard J. Leskosky office phone: (217) 244-2704 Assistant Director FAX: (217) 244-2223 Unit for Cinema Studies University of Illinois