I used to love the 1972 movie Last Tango in Paris. It was this weirdly hot, kind of love story, but mostly fuck story between a 48-year-old Marlon Brando, and 19-year-old Maria Schneider, and it had sex scenes so intense people have been speculating for years that real sex did tape place during the filming.
While both actors and the director, Bernardo Bertolucci, denied any real sex occurred during filming, a tape from 2013 has just bee released where Bertolucci admits that the infamous butter rape scene in the film was not consensual and Schneider didn’t even know it was going to happen, as it wasn’t in the script.
In the tape, Bertolucci admits that he and Brando were having breakfast and came up with the idea to use a stick of butter to rape Maria onscreen in the morning shoot. Bertolucci said:
The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting. We were having, with Marlon, breakfast on the floor of the flat where I was shooting. There was a baguette, there was butter and we looked at each other and, without saying anything, we knew what we wanted.
I mean, I can forgive them for thinking that because I, too, cannot look at breakfast foods without thinking ‘You know, I think I should rape someone with one of these objects.’
In case you’re not familiar, in the scene, Brando uses a stick of butter as sexual lubricant to rape Schneider.
Bertolucci went on to explain:
I had been, in a way, horrible to Maria because I didn’t tell her what was going on. I wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress. I wanted her to react humiliated.
Sooo, you and Brando, just a couple of middle-aged men, decided it would be best for the film, and more authentic, if you actually did humiliate and assault a 19-year-old on screen? Wow, you know, I’ve always thought Maria Schneider was great in that scene, so maybe we need to take out all acted rapes altogether in film because clearly just assaulting a woman for the sake of the movie gives a way better performance!
What pisses me off even more about this is that back in 2007, Schneider herself said this happened, but no one gave a shit and it certainly didn’t make the news. Back then she said:
I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can’t force someone to do something that isn’t in the script, but at the time I didn’t know that. Marlon said to me ‘Maria, don’t worry, it’s just a movie,’ but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real, I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated to be honest, I felt a little raped by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was only one take.
So Maria said this and no one really cared, but now, almost 10 years later, we have a recording of Bertolucci himself actually admitting it and everyone is up in arms. Stars are taking to Twitter to denounce the director and actor, saying they’ll never watch the movie again and the story is making headline news (aka Us Magazine).
It’s just too bad that Maria Schneider died in 2011 so she can’t see people actually take an assault claim (that she made in 2007) actually being taken somewhat seriously.
To all other actresses out there: I don’t know how the game has changed since the 70s, film-making still seems to be a bit of a boys club, so if you walk on to set one day and your director and leading man are looking at you weird while eyeing some kind of breakfast condiment, I say get the fuck out of there, because Hollywood is a gross place where apparently Marlon Brando thinks its fine to butter up your junk without asking you because he thinks it would make a good scene. Nah.
Kent says
Most strippers wear a “BACK UP” pair of smaller but tighter panty so. If customer in the VIP were to slip a finger or two under the girls shirt shorts or T- Back, the second “SAFETY” panty is snug enough in the crouch area, the girl(s) can can stop the discuss because the guy isn’t aware if the second tighter pair and then has to try to get under the elastic. By that time, the dancerwill either give him a very serious warning or get up and tell the guy straight up what her rules or Clubs rules or both are as a (1) time warning.
So, why didn’t she have two pair of panties like the above or prepare in some way to protect herself????
d says
Can’t get worked up over this.
Until the 20th century, the public had the correct notion that actors and actresses were little more than bums and whores.