MAKING THE UNTHINKABLE POSSIBLE

See, this is the kind of thing I mean when I say that it is immoral for artists to smear their sick fantasies all over the rest of us. It is obscuring the issue to say people have a First Amendment right to vomit in the public square. The fact is, we, the viewing public also have the right not to have the cultural air we breathe polluted. Second-hand smut is bad for us.

Nicole Kidman’s latest movie, Birth – made after the soon-to-open Stepford Wives – see the Australian Oscar winner Kidman play a young widow who falls in love with a 10-year-old boy she believes is the reincarnation of her dead husband.

But executives from New Line Cinema, the production company, are reportedly considering pulling the $US50 million ($72 million) flick because of scenes showing Kidman bathing naked with the young lad.

Sources told the Enquirer that the film had undergone a string of creative battles and rewrites.

Now executives have told the film’s executive producers that the two scenes – showing Kidman and the boy stripping off and kissing in the bath – are “borderline disgusting” to watch.

It is, according to the public relations company charged with promoting the film, “a publicity nightmare”.

Click here for the whole story.

The good thing is, the film is garnering “outrage” from some folks in the Biz…although after The Passion controvery-success, we will never be sure again as to whether anything is genuine outrage or just a marketing strategy.