I can't begin my post without first acknowledging Jason's kind comments about me--thank you, Jason.
I wanted to say thanks for the James Schamus interview and link to the entire article. AfterElton is one of the ONLY places that has dealt with these issues and very well written by Michael Jensen to boot.
It's interesting that besides them, the gay press has pretty much remained silent about it, I still don't get it.
A couple comments about the interview:
They wanted to put in some deleted scenes. There was a discussion about deleted scenes, but quite frankly, as Ang said, “The reason I deleted them was because I wanted to delete them. So why would I put them in the DVD?”
The conversation implies there would be no "director's cut" of BBM, which I had never expected, but Schamus did not indicate why the "extra scene" footage could not or would not be available for a dvd edition. I understand they'd want to leave the movie as is, but not why the material wouldn't be included as extras.
I really think there is a very powerful aspect to the things you don't notice. You don't notice when the guy at the water cooler pauses and thinks, “I better not tell this joke because I realize that a lot of people have seen this movie and seem to like it, and maybe it's not safe for me to push it here.”
A post right after the oscars, from member sherryfair, was indicative of what "ampas" did in this regard, and not the film itself. She wrote that:
"the day after the oscars I walked into my office and one of the guys there came up to me and noticed my mood. He knew how much I loved BBM and how much I had tried to get the guys in the office to see it, much to my ultimate futility. I was hoping an oscar win would tell them it was okay to see it. He said, 'You really didn't think your faggot movie was going to win, did you?' I walked into my cubicle thinking that the academy had given him the permission to say that."Also, in the interview, Schamus and Jensen discussed the comments notoriously made by Curtis and Borgnine.
You guys (AfterElton)probably noticed, but nobody else noticed there was no mainstream press pick-up on those comments.
Maybe not "after" Curtis said what he said, but Tony Curtis's comments were first
made in an interview on Fox News Channel, pretty mainstream, if you ask me.
...for what it's worth.
