From "Romeo and Juliet Was a Tragedy/In 1968, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting were the world’s most famous teens. In 2023, they sued Paramount for abuse" by Lila Shapiro (New York Magazine).
The trial judge dismissed the case — and ordered Hussey and Whiting to pay Paramount’s legal fees — based on freedom of speech and the failure to meet a procedural requirement in the California Child Victims Act.
This is a very interesting article (if you can get through the pay wall or listen to it read on the New York Times "Audio" app (yes, Times, though the article is in New York Magazine)). Hussey and Whiting did not dream up this lawsuit on their own. I'll just leave it at that.
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Anything that eliminates retroactive criminalization by the very same California utopians who previously demanded free sex, gratuitous sex scenes, exploitative teen sex comedies, and mainstream X-rated films 50 years ago is a good thing.
Now, let's take a look at the album covers of that era:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Faith_(Blind_Faith_album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houses_of_the_Holy
And a wee bit later:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_at_First_Sting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Pie_(album)
And films:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellini_Satyricon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Flamingos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grease_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_House
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porky%27s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Nerds
The anarchistic left never settles on consistent ideals or goals. They merely settle on change for the sake of change, and destruction for the sake of destruction.
I don’t see how either Whiting or Hussey could have imagined that the suit would be successful. The movie was filmed in Italy where the age of consent was — and still is — 14.
Fifty-five years ago? C'mon, man!
Hussey and Whiting did not dream up this lawsuit on their own. I'll just leave it at that.
Indeed! When I read the article, it occurred to me that the lawyer offered just a different kind of promise as the Director did. Neither one of the actors seem to have acquired wisdom as they've aged. That's a sad commentary on what has been taken from them.
I wonder how many young kids see the movie and see only the glamour.
In the '80s our middle school English teacher made it assigned viewing. We spent two days watching it together in class. We were all kind of skeeved out...
...the movie was on our school's dial access machine in the library, the system with a rotary dial where you dial in the code and the movie shows in cubicles with headphones. New York State schools invested a bajillion dollars in these dial access systems in the late '70s and they were immediately obsolete...
Applying a previous court's axiom that "we all know pornography when we see it," "Romeo and Juliet" was not and is not pornography. You know what is pornography? Certain people who actually like pornography using inaccurate and post-dated assertions of pornography as weapons for political or financial purposes.
ha ha ha
We saw that one in junior high, I think, they showed it at school. And the teacher warned us there would be a little nudity, and she expected us all to behave maturely. And then we're in the dark, and when we see her tits we all go, "Wooo!"
It was actually kind of a let down. I was expecting full frontal!
"essentially pornography," "a poisonous product," and "evidence of a crime."
ambulance chasers running into my junior high school gymnasium and waving their suitcases at all the teachers
too funny
that Shakespeare fucker must be stopped!
Man Photographed As A Baby On 'Nevermind' Cover Sues Nirvana For Sexual Exploitation
A judge in California has dismissed a lawsuit filed against former band members of Nirvana over their iconic Nevermind album cover.
Spencer Elden sued former members of the band in August 2021 for child exploitation and pornography, saying the band knowingly distributed a naked photo of him as a baby on the 1991 album cover and profited from it. Elden was just 4 months old when he was photographed for the cover. Now 30, he was seeking $150,000 in damages.
Elden had until Dec. 30 to respond to the motion, but his legal team missed the deadline and so the case was dismissed.
Judge Fernando M. Olguin of the Central District Court in California said Elden and his legal team have until Jan. 13 to re-up the case. If the defendants file another motion to dismiss, both sides will meet on Jan. 20.
"In accordance with the court's order we will be filing a Second Amended Complaint very soon. We are confident that Spencer will be allowed to move forward with the case," Marsh Law, the firm that represents Elden, said in a statement.
In their motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the defendants say Elden profited from being on the album cover as a baby and has benefited from it as an adult.
"Elden has spent three decades profiting from his celebrity as the self-anointed 'Nirvana Baby.' He has re-enacted the photograph in exchange for a fee, many times; he has had the album title Nevermind tattooed across his chest; he has appeared on a talk show wearing a self-parodying, nude-colored onesie; he has autographed copies of the album cover for sale on eBay; and he has used the connection to try to pick up women," the defendants say.
In November, Elden's legal team released a statement in response to the album's 30th anniversary, when the cover was rereleased.
"It's past time to finally put an end to the child exploitation and violation of privacy our client has endured for his entire life," they wrote.
"I don’t see how either Whiting or Hussey could have imagined that the suit would be successful. The movie was filmed in Italy where the age of consent was — and still is — 14."
It's a suit against Paramount. You might want to study the legal topic of choice of law. Also it's not a rape case. It's a case about abusing the actors by pressuring them to appear naked and also lying to them that no nakedness would be shown. The nakedness shown is him from the back and her flash of nipple.
New York State schools invested a bajillion dollars in these dial access systems in the late '70s and they were immediately obsolete...
Lords and Ladies and all Heaven's Angels! Isn't that the way of it?
My district spent nearly a million in local tax funds to capture a matching fund grant to put Palm Pilots PDAs into the hands of principals and assistant principals, supposed to aid monitoring classroom teachers. I mean, PILOT devices, not the later Palm III, V, VII, Zire, Tungsten ... Obsolete the day the day the order was cut, let alone "immediately".
Then, there were the "SMART" white boards. We didn't even have a grant to help with that expense. Over $10K per classroom for a device to replace a chalk board or overhead projector -- that required $100 per month or so for specialized RFID-equipped erasable markers so the strokes near the board could be interpreted as mouse-moves and clicks... When delivered, it was found that the boards had grounded, 3-prong, power cords; most of the classrooms still used two-hole electrical outlets. The SMART systems sat from August until February while the facilities people wrangled about how to pay for electricians to come re-wire the walls.
As for replacing chalk boards, we used Federal Lunch Program money to buy a server-grade PC, one wireless router per school, three per school large screen monitors wired to "thin client" PCs (At a time when such devices were still exorbitantly expensive), and web-page hosting services so that the weekly and daily lunch menus could be displayed in the halls, lunch room, and online for parents at home. We HAD to spend that money, otherwise the Department of Agriculture would have taken funds back, and cut our budget, at the end of their fiscal year.
Ah, but back to the original topic... I wonder how many school libraries were lumbered with copies of performances of Shakespeare -- or anything else -- in media formats like LaserVision, or BetaMax, VHS, even DVD (now that BluRay or Streaming services offer alternatives) ? What was the cost of a new LaserDisc in 1985, versus the cost of well illustrated and annotated paper book in "library binding"? And how steep was the depreciation cost between then and now?
I am very much a Luddite with regard to technology in the public schools.
No one should forget what the world was like then. Nudity was everywhere in entertainment, art, photography, and theater. Oh! Calcutta!, Hair, Equus. etc. all had total nudity scenes on stage. Last Tango in Paris, Don't Look Now, Blow Up, etc. all had steamy scenes with total nudity.
What there actors were asked to do and did was par for the course.
You get more with Shakespeare and a flash of nipple than you do with Shakespeare alone.
More red flags than a CCP military parade. Just a sample,....
"But I always follow my heart.
Whenever Marinozzi suspects one of his clients is struggling with some sort of emotional problem, he sends them to an acquaintance of his, Stacy Feiner, a “business psychologist”
The lawsuit was dismissed in May, in part because of procedural errors.
He had always dreamed of making it in Hollywood.
The film was partly inspired by a scam Marinozzi had pulled in his 20s
he’d come to feel Marinozzi lied, telling people whatever he thought they wanted to hear.
Hussey’s and Whiting’s legal drama, he told me, would serve as fodder for a sensational screenplay."
It was, in my opinion, a wonderful movie that should have won the Oscar for best picture. It also kickstarted the careers of Hussey and Whiting.
Too bad if their careers turned out less than they hoped, but that didn't poison the movie, nor did their nudity, which lasted only a few seconds.
May I tell you about a common occurrence with my son? As a toddler, he'd be playing in a plastic pool in the back yard, nekkid because he'd pushed off his waterlogged Pampers Pull-Ups, and he'd go racing across the alley from our Bawlmer rowhouse, to visit his elderly buddies Jim and Anne, whenever they'd come outside.
Jim and Ann had no problem with a nekkid toddler running about their alley or back yard, they'd had their own kids and grandkids doing the same thing in the alley decades before our time. So I took a series of shots of the boy in the pool, then of him racing away down the alley, nekkid. My wife, who did her pediatrics residency at Hopkins, laughed at me and said taking pictures of all that was perfectly OK with her, in her expert opinion. The pictures came out hilarious. That was in the 1990s. The film was developed at a local drug store, without any police involvement.
That story leads to a more recent experience with my son, who I told as a young teen not to take pix of the topless females at Barton Springs, the local swimming hole in Austin, where toplessness is legal and often happens among all ages of females.
The point of the above might be intent matters, it might be that circumstances differ, or that mores change with the times, or just that tiny tinklers aren't as naughty as most other forms of nekkidness. I don't know.
While the denouncement of this excellent film portrayal of Romeo & Juliet is ongoing, let's recall that Taming of the Shrew and Merchant of Venice have already been damned by the scolds of the world. Coriolanus avoids censorship and cancellation only because nobody has ever seen it.
Sounds like a last-ditch effort to be relevant.
I don't think either of them had any kind of career of note.
let us start with first offense by Zeffirelli >>> neither of the two were Italian as were Romeo et Juliet
Althouse:
"flash of nipple"
Just for the sake of accuracy, it was 1.5 boobs.
So I learned something. It turns out that the age of consent has nothing to do with the age when one can be photographed nude for publication (whether publication is in a magazine or as part of a film such as Brooke Shields in “Pretty Baby” or a video like used to be behind a curtain at the local videotape store, apparently it makes no difference). Interesting.
Nakedness... nudity with an age enhancement. It was necessary for the art is an ancient plea.
It's a suit against Paramount. You might want to study the legal topic of choice of law
I enjoy you so much, Althouse. But here is where you could just talk about choice of law, instead of telling someone to study it. It would be an interesting conversation, with your expertise.
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