12.18.07 5:00 AM CST
• Media
• Jamie Malanowski
Our friends at Time magazine made a curious editorial decision the other day. In an article on the new film Charlie Wilson’s War, they quoted an article which quoted Julia Roberts talking about the role she played in the film: "Joanne's so fantastic to play, and between the hair and the tits and the attitude. . . I loved every second of it,’’ Time quoted Roberts. "I don't read that many scripts. I finish less than I care to reflect upon. I mean, it's just s___, it's just a big pile of steaming s___ that sits in my house. . .'' Lots of magazines want to have their cake and eat it, too—they want to talk to famous people and quote them using vernacular language, but then they want to use dashes and brackets and so on to protect readers from seeing that vernacular language (language, by the way, which is all over the TV and which the readers liberally use.) Seldom do we see a magazine not be able to make up its mind in public. Weird. Thankfully, Playboy doesn’t play that game.
Meanwhile—welcome, tits.
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Comments on this entry:
In her April 1963 "Playboy Interview", Helen Gurley Brown describes some censorship problems she had with her best-seller, "Sex and the Single Girl":
http://cyber.playboy.com/members/magazine/interviews/196304/int004.html
Playboy: Did you run into any additional censorship problems with your publisher?
Helen Gurley Brown: There was one line that they cut out in the first chapter. It was exhorting the single girl to be proud of herself and I said: "I think you should have a quietly 'F--- You' attitude about the whole thing." In the galleys, my publisher changed it to "Frig You" attitude and I got up as fast as I could and said: "Are you mad? A lady would say 'F--- You' but she would never say that other thing." So he said: "Well, I don't think you ought to say that. It just doesn't sound right." We changed it to "a quietly 'Drop Dead' attitude."
It is ironic that in reporting what was censored out of Mrs. Brown's landmark tome, Playboy censored it, too. (I assume she did not in fact actually say "f-dash-dash-dash".)
Oh, well, I suppose it is the season for such ellipsis:
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
-- Clement Moore, "The Night before Christmas"
Julia was rocking that bikini, it's going to be an awesome film!
Tom hanks used to work at Spengers in Berkeley too, very cool.