Category Archives: Moral Hygiene

I Want Your Love Banned In Australia

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I Want Your Love, is the first fea­ture film directed by Travis Matthews. It fol­lows the first sex­ual rela­tion­ship two male best friends embark upon one night in San Fran­cisco, before one of them leaves for the Amer­i­can Midwest.

I Want Your Love was meant to be screened at gay film fes­ti­vals in Aus­tralia, at the end of a global fes­ti­val tour, but the board has banned it from being shown any­where in the country.

James Franco recently col­lab­o­rated with this film’s direc­tor, on a film that explores sex as a story-telling tool in addi­tion to cen­sor­ship and per­sonal, sex­ual and cre­ative bound­aries, Inte­rior. Leather bar. A short film which pre­miered at Sun­dance fes­ti­val. It is based on the 1980 gay film Cruis­ing, which had 40 min­utes of graphic sex scenes cut, and aims to explore the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of gay sex and censorship.

Franco crit­i­cised the Board in a YouTube video, say­ing adults should be allowed to choose what they watch. He said: “I don’t know why in this day and age some­thing like this, a film that’s using sex not for tit­il­la­tion but to talk about being human, is being banned.”

Matthews issued a state­ment on the ban, say­ing that he wasn’t “shy­ing away from sex” in the film. He added that he used sex “as a tool to show char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, inter­per­sonal issues, inti­macy, play­ful­ness and some­thing over­all closer to the real­ity I’m famil­iar with.”

Six months ago the Board allowed Don­key Love, a doc­u­men­tary about a Colom­bian folk tra­di­tion where men have sex with don­keys to pre­pare them for rela­tion­ships with women, to screen at film fes­ti­vals in Syd­ney and Melbourne.

A peti­tion to remove the ban already has over 2,500 sig­na­tures. Aimed at Les­ley O’Brien, direc­tor of the Aus­tralian Clas­si­fi­ca­tion Board, it says that while the film con­tains “actual sex, it is shown within a non-violent, intel­li­gent and artis­tic narrative.”


Taking Off

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Famous first Amer­i­can film of Czech direc­tor Milos For­man. It tells the story of a group of par­ents whose chil­dren have run away from home. The par­ents take the oppor­tu­nity to redis­cover their youth.

It fea­tures a num­ber of mem­o­rable set pieces, includ­ing an open-mic record label audi­tion which is weaved through­out the film, fea­tur­ing a num­ber of female singers (includ­ing a young Carly Simon and a haunt­ing acoustic bal­lad by a then-unknown Kathy Bates) per­form­ing old stan­dards, folk bal­lads, and rock songs; a meet­ing in which a group of gen­er­ally middle-class con­ser­v­a­tive par­ents are taught how to smoke mar­i­juana; and a rau­cu­ous but sweet game of strip poker played by the adults.

Whether Tak­ing Off is car­i­ca­ture or dead-on is, pre­sum­ably, all a mat­ter of per­spec­tive and dis­tance. But it’s def­i­nitely hilar­i­ous: A dead­pan Buck Henry effort­lessly dom­i­nates as a mil­que­toast, and the sup­port­ing weirdos are all aces. (In his first on-screen appear­ance, Vin­cent Schi­avelli leads a pot-smoking tuto­r­ial for con­cerned par­ents want­ing to under­stand their run­aways bet­ter: “That’s called ‘bog­a­rt­ing’ the joint, and it’s very rude.”) It’s also a true New York movie.


Prom It’s a Pleasure: Etiquette Film From1961

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The Prom It’s a Plea­sure is a well-produced color film that stars the 1961 Coca-Cola Junior Miss Pageant win­ner as the guide to a well-mannered prom night.

From the phone call ask­ing Junior Miss for the date, to the drop-off at the end of the night, this film details prom eti­quette for the curi­ous and uncouth teenager. It also explains that the boy should call his date’s mother before the dance to find out the color of her dress so he can match the cor­sage to it.

Whole­some six­ties movies often dealt with Amer­i­can morals, and this prom night film is a clas­sic exam­ple. At the high school dance itself, the film shows how to dance, how to ask some­one to dance, ways to ask some­one to dance, how to fill out a dance card, and how to nav­i­gate the refresh­ments, which con­sisted mostly of Coca-Cola, not sur­pris­ingly. In addi­tion to all the prom do’s and don’ts eti­quette tips, this film fea­tures great footage of a typ­i­cal six­ties prom.


Once Upon a Honeymoon

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When our soci­ety went from “buy­ing to replace” to “buy to be happy”, the effect snow­balled over the decades with the force needed to keep from expe­ri­enc­ing a real exis­ten­tial crisis.

Once Upon a Hon­ey­moon is a 1956 musi­cal spon­sored film about a cou­ple wish­ing for a new home. It starts off with a group of angels who decide to help a cou­ple have a hon­ey­moon. The hus­band (Jeff) tries to write a song, while the wife (Mary) day­dreams about a new home, and imag­ines what it would be like to have the lat­est house­hold prod­ucts with the help of the angel. The angel then helps the man come up with a new song called “A Cas­tle in the Sky”.

The film was directed by Gower Cham­pion, and starred Vir­ginia Gib­son, Ward Ellis, Alan Mow­bray, Chick Chan­dler, Veron­ica Pataky and Rus­sell Hicks. In recent years the film has gained a small fol­low­ing, after it was mocked on the show Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000. It is in the pub­lic domain.


Keep Off the Grass, Anti-Marijuana Propaganda Film

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Mom dis­cov­ers her son’s stash. Instead of smack­ing him sense­less, his chain-smoking, booz­ing dad lec­tures him on the dan­gers of pot smok­ing. Tom decides to dis­cover the Truth for him­self and learns a harsh les­son before decid­ing to “Keep Off The Grass”.

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Keep off the Grass is a edu­ca­tional film writ­ten, pro­duced and directed by Sid Davis. Like all of Sid Davis’s films they were made very heavy hand­edly. Tom gets in trou­ble when his mother finds a joint in his room. Instead of pun­ish­ing Tom, his father chal­lenges him to learn more about mar­i­jua­nas evil effects on soci­ety. Nobody gets killed in this Sid Davis film, yet Tom still learns a harsh les­son after being mugged by drug­gies and learn­ing that his best friend sells pot to school chil­dren. One of the last Sid Davis films to focus on drugs.