"Merchant of Venice" US distributor demands changes.[frescoes are "porn" ]

[Kellanved]

US distributors of the film Merchant of Venice, which premiered in London this week, have asked the director to cut out a background fresco by a Venetian old master so it is fit for American television viewers.


US networks have been embroiled in controversy over naked flesh since Janet Jackson exposed a breast during a half-time performance during the Superbowl. A lesser fuss has blown up about a trailer for the hit television series Desperate Housewives on Monday Night football, in which an actress with her back to the camera drops her towel in a locker room.

Distributors regularly ask for cuts in films so that they can be shown on US tele-vision and by airlines. The request to "paint-box the wallpaper" - cover over the fresco - was contained in a letter from the US distrib-utors, Sony, to Michael Radford.

...
Finally, according to Mr Radford, there was "a very curious request which said 'Could you please paint-box out the wallpaper?'. I said wallpaper, what wallpaper? This is the 16th century, people didn't have wall-paper."
...
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/9de72be0-447c-11d9-9f6a-00000e2511c8.html

:shrug:

[Book Lover]

1. Oh, by my lack of god...

Thanks for making the US-ian people look like rubes! Molto grazie!


Then there was this final paragraph, which I find hilarious:

Funding was delayed until about a week before shooting was finished, in part because banks required a document to be circulated and signed among 17 groups of lawyers certifying that the writer - William Shakespeare - and his descendants had no lien on the picture.

[cleofus1]

2. too bad

Some Americans are so offended by the human body.

[regnaD kciN]

3. I'm wondering more...

...about what the reaction to the film is going to be, since "Merchant," with its Jewish money-lender villain, is considered by many (myself included) to be extremely anti-Semitic.

[Maple]

4. I've never understood

the anti-semitic thing. The whole speech, 'if you prick us, do we not bleed', was a tremendously strong statement against prejudice especially for the time.