Here’s a dumb question.
If you uploaded the movie onto YouTube could you get potentially arrested for uploading child pornography?
No, because it isn’t remotely child pornography.
Correct. Nowhere near meeting the legal test.
Remember also: the suit this thread is about is a civil action for exploitative conditions leading to “lost of opportunities and suffering of mental and emotional distress”. This is NOT a criminal complaint.
The extension of the statute of limitations for this sort of thing was, AIUI, intended mostly to be for the benefit of victims in such institutional abuse cases as the Boy Scouts, Catholic Church, and similar, but certainly the studios were fair game, knowing that exploitative situations were a reality across the industry.
Now, asking for $500 million? Yeah, that part looks like fishing for a settlement offer. But it’s what you do.
Just to note that the movie was not filmed in Hollywood, but filmed in Rome and perhaps other parts of Italy.
I don’t know about Italian sets, but in the US union rules are that parents are always allowed on the set during filming. If the parents or a representative were not there during filming, it is on them to some extent. But my impression of the article on the lawsuit is that they are objecting to the act of distributing the film, and whether or not people signed off is irrelevant.
We saw the unedited version in my 9th grade honors English class Mumble Mumble years ago. The teacher covered up Romeo’s behind with her hand as he walked across the screen. It so happened in this particular class that there was only one boy in a class full of girls. So then when they flash Juliet’s boobs, she yells “Jimmy, close your eyes!”
Thank you for the information. I had no idea where to find this level of detail (although I confess I didn’t look beyond IMDB basic).
If it were, anyone who owned a copy of Blind Faith, Houses of the Holy, or Virgin Killer would be in a lot of trouble.
Me three.
I remember getting more aroused at the scene of the fully-clothed Juliet stretching herself and breathing an ecstatic sigh than the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nude scene.
Judge says “nope”.
If they are making residuals, the more they can get the movie into the news, the more they make. The studio also makes more money off the movie.
Realistically, this is a pretty cheap and easy way to advertise an old movie. The newspapers do it for you, for the cost of a few hours of a lawyer’s work.
(Not saying that this is what’s happening, just pointing out that it’s pretty win-win either way that the suit goes.)
Was a big deal to some people at the time. It was a few years before I got to see this pornographic scene… and it was disappointing after all the hoopla.
Not, however, a big enough deal to prevent my high school class from going to see it. (We were in the oldest year or two of high school.)
I was young and innocent enough to hope that Romeo didn’t turn around. (He doesn’t.)
I remember my father, in conversation with somebody, arguing that it was right to include that scene in that fashion; because the strength of the connection forged in such a short time between Romeo and Juliet was necessary to understand their later behavior, and he felt that showing them naked with each other helped indicate that strong connection.
If the actors were genuinely reluctant at the time, we didn’t of course know about it.
– I also remember, not too long after that, going to a play with my parents along with a group of other people; I don’t remember the name, but the play involved a group of witches and much of it was performed in the nude, both sexes. (No actual – or mimicked – sex.) My parents thought the nudity wasn’t right in that case, because they thought it indicated vulnerability in scenes in which the characters were supposed to be showing strength. I disagreed with them and said I thought in that context the confidence to go naked indicated strength; though I’m not sure I phrased it that way at the time. – I must by then have gotten over not being sure that I wanted to see non-marble genitalia; or else I got over it during the first few minutes of the first nude scene.
I expect the play was controversial at the time; but it wasn’t too controversial to put on.
@thorny_locust’s memories reminded me of a production of “Hair” my girlfriend and I saw in Siegen, Germany about 1990. It was an American travelling ensemble, and before the start, the announcer informed the audience that there would be nudity at the end of the first half and that any photographing at this scene was forbidden. If anybody would take a photo, the show would be over and the second act not played. So what happened? In fact at the end of the first act, there was a group scene and suddenly all stage lights went out, and when they came back after 20 seconds or so, the whole troupe (about 25 people) stood naked in a pose for about 15 seconds until the lights went out again and the first act was over. And of course you could see two or three cameras flashing during that short time. I remember thinking what horny idiots did this and was worrying about not seeing the end of the play, but in the end, they came back and played the second act.
AFAIK, the original musical is from 1967. Was this nude scene in the stage directions from the beginning? Was it played like this in the US in 1967? It must’ve been a big scandal, I suppose. Whereas stage nudity in German theater in 1990 was almost obligatory.
I saw it around 1974 on tour. The big nude scene with the whole cast was at the end of the 1st act as I recall it.
I’ve never seen the play, only the movie, but I was 16 at the time and I am pretty certain it was in from the beginning. This was a play about hippies, remember. I did see Oh Calcutta which was more about sex and also had nudity. In Louisiana.
I doubt very much the actors would get a penny on more movie sales (DVD? Streaming? I doubt a theater is going to show it.) Depends on their contract, which, them being kids at the time and not all that famous, was probably not super favorable to them.
That was pretty close to the time when I must have seen the much less famous play that I described above.
Scandalous, but not too scandalous to stage – or for a whole lot of people to go see it; for some of whom, no doubt, the scandal was an attraction.
Nudity was actually in some ways more acceptable in the US than it is now; though mixed-gender adult nudity less so than other versions. Single-sex group nakedness in some contexts was taken for granted, especially for men and boys but to some extent also for women and girls; and there was in many contexts a lot more leeway for small children than there is now.
The OP mentioned that a recent change in California law allowed a lawsuit this late, so that’s more likely the reason.