Day: July 9, 2023

Jeff and Sasha barely touched upon the wonderful world of cinema, save for reminding each other that Mission Impossible 7 opens on Tuesday, and that a full-blast trailer for Ridley Scott’s Napoleon will be attached to the feature. Topics were mostly of social-cultural nature, and that’s fine. The Jonah Hill texting drama, the continuing box-office collapse of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the N.Y. Times addresses the French Connection censorship saga, the failure of Joy Ride to connect with a decent-sized audience. Again, the link.

…at a commercial plex. This has never happened before.

Five weeks after the Great French Connection Censorship Intrigue was first reported by yours truly (and which resulted in many articles worldwide along with no fewer than six HE articles between 6.3 and 6.20), The New York Times Magazine has boldly jumped into the fray with an article titled “What’s Lost When Censors Tamper With Classic Films.”

Three aspects are worth noting.

(a) The Times almost certainly dodged this story for several weeks out of squeamishness over the use of the N-word, which is what the censoring of a certain Act One scene in William Friedkin‘s 1971 Oscar-winner (i.e., Gene Hackman‘s Popeye Doyle using the epithet in a discussion with Roy Scheider‘s Cloudy in a police station foyer) was all about.

So when they finally posted a story about it, they had story editor Niela Orr, a youngish woman of color, write it. That gives them a certain political protection.

(b) In describing the scene, Orr uses the actual six-letter N-word — something that no one else writing about this story would ever do. Because she can.

(c) The one mystifying and unfulfilled element in this story is the absence of statements from either director William Friedkin or copyright owner Disney about who ordered the cut.

Was the scene edited at Friedkin’s request, as all available evidence clearly indicates? Orr shrugs her shoulders and wonders like the rest of us. If she reached out to Friedkin and Disney, she isn’t saying.

“We can only guess at the precise reasoning behind this particular change to The French Connection,” Orr writes. “Is it Disney, treating adult audiences like the children it’s used to serving? Or did Friedkin, who once modified the color of the film, approve the change?”

For whatever reason Orr doesn’t mention a couple of pertinent facts. A visually confirmed, easily verifiable report that “in Disney’s DCP asset list it says that the currently-streaming version of The French Connection is identified as ‘2021 William Friedkin v2.’” Plus a statement from The Criterion Channel, passed along in “a 6.9.23 HE story,” that “according to our licensor [Disney], this is a ‘Director’s Edit‘ of the film.”

I’ve been told by various girlfriends over the decades that certain boundaries are not cool to cross, and that if I cross them there will be hell to pay. We all understand that women want these boundaries to be respected and observed, and that men who ignore said boundaries will almost certainly be on their own before long.

I’ve understood these boundaries all my life. I know how committed relationships are played and maintained so don’t tell me.

Some of the boundaries that I’ve been warned about over the years are (a) no romping around with groups of women or flirting with various women by way of athletic group activities (hiking, jogging, volleyball on the beach, swimming and boogie-boarding), (b) no posing for photos with various women in my Speedo (this was when I was younger and slimmer) and posting them on social media, and (c) no drinking friendships with guys who are in unstable or neurotic places (loutish party boys, anti-social types, cads).

My ex-girlfriends, in short, have always wanted me to behave in a generally loyal and prudent fashion — like a calm, centered adult and not like some 16-year-old spray shorts. Any guy who says serious girlfriends don’t lay down the law along these lines is a fucking liar.

In late 2021 Jonah Hill laid down the same general boundaries with his longtime surfer girlfriend Sarah Brady, and over the last couple of days she’s gone public with their private texts. She’s called Hill’s general manner with her emotionally abusive and repressive.

They’ve since broken up but What Sarah meant is that she wanted to be free to do whatever and whenever, including socializing and flirting with male surfers and behaving like an attractive and dynamic social-media presence. As the girlfriend of a famous movie guy she wanted her social due — she wanted to be Kim Kardashian on a surfboard or something in that realm. Famous, flashy, livin’ the life.

She now says she felt that Jonah was being a controlling wet blanket and cramping her style and that his attitude wasn’t feminist enough. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he is too controlling, and maybe he was just insisting that Sarah follow the same rules that 98% of women insist upon.

But Brady posting private texts definitely isn’t cool. It’s gauche, in fact.