7 (Part 1): That Time David Mamet Wrote a Draft of Lolita (And Other Hollywood Tragedies)

It's high time we talk about the 1997 movie adaptation of Lolita by Adrian Lyne. Between Stanley Kubrick's adaptation in 1962 and Dominique Swain playing Lolita in the '90s. In part one of this two-parter, we take a look at knock-off Lolita productions, how the conversation around child sex abuse changes in Hollywood and America in the 80s and 90s, and how Stranger Danger misses the mark going into the '90s.

Notes:

Adrian Lyne talking Lolita in '98: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACi2JdJBM44&t=1s

Lolita Comes Again (Esquire '98): https://classic.esquire.com/article/1997/2/1/lolita-comes-again

Natalie Portman talks Lolita: https://www.themarysue.com/natalie-portman-talks-about-lolita-label/

That Roman Polanski Petition: https://www.indiewire.com/2009/09/over-100-in-film-community-sign-polanski-petition-55821/

Lolita Behind the Scenes Featurette '97: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJFRnaYyMQ&t=2s

Lolita Screen Test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4hAOuXWxyc

Twinky (1970): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG9-C3EW6zo

Jodie Foster and Taxi Driver: https://www.wmagazine.com/story/forty-years-after-taxi-driver-and-her-first-oscar-nomination-jodie-foster-recalls-the-making-of-a-classic/

Polly Platt: The Invisible Woman (YMRT): http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/2020/7/pollyplattarchive28

Brooke Shields reflects on Pretty Baby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTSSBJ6xyi4

Samantha Geimer on 60 Minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5dIdoaDgN8&feature=youtu.be

Milk Carton Kids: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/when-bad-news-was-printed-on-milk-cartons/516675/

Stranger Danger & Mass Incarceration: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/05/stranger-danger-mass-incarceration-paul-renfro

RAINN Statistics: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Trigger warning. This podcast involves discussions of child sexual abuse
and pedophilia. Listener discretion as advised. Let's play a game.
It's called how many men can we hire to write
a script of Lolita. We'll start with Adrian Line, an
English director who started in commercials and graduated to commercial
hits like Flash Dance and Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal,

(00:23):
and by Line was ready to make a big budget
art film, a very specific big budget art film. It
was Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the first attempt to adapt the
story to the big screen since Stanley Kubrick's version in
nineteen sixty two. In February of four, Line wrote a
thirty five page document he called preparatory Notes on Nabokov's novel.

(00:46):
The document said this, the movie should start in prison,
because if the audience understands that Humbert is paying his dues,
it may help our case. There's a pretty impressive history
of the production of this film, chronicled by writer Elizabeth
Kay in Esquire magazine in a piece that was advertised
on the cover of the issue as Who's Afraid of Lolita?

(01:07):
An image of the movie's eventual star fifteen year old
Dominique Swain licks her pointer finger and looks at the camera,
wearing a revealing but period appropriate blue linen romper. Inside
there's an image of Swain from that same photo shoot
blowing a bubble of bright pink gum with a different
ghoulish headline, Lolita Comes Again. Title aside the piece itself

(01:28):
is pretty critical of the whole production, and Kay spent
a lot of time on set chronicling it carefully. In
the nine nineties, in spite of the escalating frank sexuality
of popular movies and entertainment, Lolita was not an easy
project to get made, but it wasn't because of the
Nabokov estate. In fact, Nabokov's son Dmitri was extremely supportive

(01:49):
of the project and by the mid nineties was the
author's only remaining living relative. Nabokov's wife and collaborator Vera,
had passed. In the nineties. Dmitri said that, I have
no doubt that Lita will be an excellent movie, and
I have no doubt that it will find an excellent distributor. Okay,
King stay confident. So Adrian Line has an outline of

(02:11):
how he wants the movie to go, and he brings
it to a trusted collaborator. Bachelor number one, James Dearden Deerdon,
then forty five years old, specialized in erotic thrillers, penning
Fatal Attraction back in the late eighties for Line and
then moving on to write and direct his own movies,
which were more erotic drillers like A Kiss Before Dying
in Rogue Trader Dirden and Lolita were not a fit.

(02:33):
So onto Bachelor number two, Harold Pinter, a Nobel Prize
winning British playwright and actor whose work was defined by
unpredictable dialogue happening in enclosed spaces. Pinter had also won
BAFTA's and had been nominated for Academy Awards for his
screenplay adaptations of two different movies that starred Jeremy Irons.
There was The French Lieutenant Wife in two with Meryl

(02:56):
Streep and Betrayal in three, and Adamation of Pinter's own play.
Lyne rejected his script as well, So onto Bachelor number three,
David Mammont. I'm sorry I was. If you were to
ask me which writer working in would be the absolute
worst to adapt Lolita, David Mammitt would be number one.

(03:18):
He was very successful, particularly for Glen Garry Glenn Ross
sealing our cultural fate of Alec Baldwin never going away.
But by ninety four, ma'am it would have been focused
on adapting his play about a female college student filing
bogus sexual harassment charges against a professor into a movie.
I just David Mammitt adapting Lolita. Ma'am. It is the

(03:39):
man that said this, Women have in men's minds such
a low place on the social ladder in this country
that it's useless to define yourself in terms of a woman.
What men need is men's approval. Ma'am. It did experience
a childhood full of violence and trauma as well, and
not all his female characters were entirely dis enfranchised, so

(04:00):
maybe there would have been some ideas in there, but
it's just it's not a fit. Writer. Sarah Weinman, who
has written about Lolita extensively and we've talked to in
previous episodes on the show, has read the ma'm at
script and had this to say about it. I was
at U T. Austin and Harry Ransom Center for another thing,
and I just decided to request the box that had
David mamm at script of Lolita just to see what

(04:23):
that was like, and wait, you got it's not good.
Mamodies total misunderstanding of women and trying to make comfort
into kind of Glen Garry kind of character, and it
just it just didn't work. But I'm glad I read
it because I was. I was curious, David, Ma'm it

(04:45):
adapting Lolita? How dare you? Anyways, the script doesn't work out,
and so that's a third strike. Here's Adrian Line giving
an interview on the topic with a quick recapt You
were hired to direct the film. Yes, um, I actually
read the novel about ten years ago when I was
doing Jacob Sladder. Spoke to Mario Kassa, who then was

(05:07):
head of Carol Coo that was then in business. He
bought the rights of it for me on spec. I
then worked with four writers. I worked with David Mahm
and I worked with Harold Pinter. I worked with James
Didn't trying desperately to trump they can't do it? Who can't?
Well there you go. Meanwhile, every woman writer is just
is just sitting there. Then we arrive at bachelor number four,

(05:30):
who of all the bad fits for this project is
the least bad fit. It's Stephen Schiff, a writer for
The New Yorker who had previously been a finalist for
the Pulitzer for Film Criticism and had written profiles of
Steven Spielberg, Stephen Sondheim, and Edward Gory and served as
a film reviewer for Fresh Air on NPR before writing
the script for Lolita. On spec Schiff said this about

(05:52):
the process. From our first meeting, I was very aware
of Adrian's fear that the audience would just hate Humbert.
The concern was, how do you get the audience who
understands that what he's doing is abhorrent to view him
as someone they want to spend time with. Okay, so
now it's time to get our cast together. Of course

(06:13):
we need our Humbert. Humbert, the European child sex abuser,
who in adaptations up until this point has been generally
romanticized or made a problematic hero at best and a
full on comedic king singing and dancing at worst. So
it's the mid nineties. Now, who do we got? Line
considers Anthony Hopkins, But at fifty six, Hopkins is a

(06:35):
little too old. Then there's Warren Beatty, who's not interested.
Dustin Hoffman is briefly linked to the project. Line also
considers Hugh Grant, who, at thirty four and approaching the
height of his rom com fame, was said to be
a little too young for the part. Por an article
in Entertainment Weekly in August, Hugh Grant says, this, The

(06:56):
trouble is that's my favorite book of old time, and
I didn't want anyone to make a film of it.
Hugh Grant loved him in Paddington too, okay, who's still
in the mix. Harold Pinter, who was one of those
acclaimed writers whose lowly line rejected, recommends Jeremy Irons, an
actor he's written for with success many times. If you

(07:16):
want an actor who isn't afraid of looking bad, Pinder
tell's line, get Jeremy Irons. Jeremy Irons at this time
was an English actor who is a little bit older
than Nabokov's thirty seven year old Humbert Humbert of the book,
but is still younger than James Mason's fifty something year
old Humbert in Kubrick's version. And most importantly, Jeremy Irons
was famously not afraid to play a bad guy. In fact,

(07:40):
he made a career on it and continues to to
this day. Whether it was his Oscar nominated performance as
murderer Klaus von Buelo in Reversal of Fortune, whether it
was his playing twin guynecologists in Dead Ringer, or hell
most famously, scar in The Lion King. So Okay, Line
decides he wants Jeremy Irons, but Jeremy I Irons needs

(08:00):
some convincing. Here is an iconic passage from Elizabeth Kay's
piece on how he needed to be convinced by his
Reversal of Fortune costar and leading lady of Adrian Line's
Fatal Attraction, Madame Glenn Close. But Irons didn't want to
play humbird. I played enough widows, he told Line, I
need this like a hole in the head. Don't be

(08:23):
so politically correct, Line said, God, we know where this
is heading. The piece continues. Irons American agent liked the script,
but the actor was warned against it by his English
agent and everyone else whose opinion he trusted, i e.
The male stars coterie of wife pr woman, makeup lady
Glenn Close, whose work with Line in Fatal Attraction, led

(08:45):
her a change of type that revived her career. Told
Irons that Line was terribly protective of actors. She also
said he shouldn't play humbird. Word of this reached Line.
He was furious. That's a knee jerk reaction, he thought.
He called Glenn Close. Are you saying? He shouted that
I can't even touch this subject? It upsets me. Lyon

(09:08):
recalls her saying, in a voice, no calmer, I've got
a daughter, perfectly understandable, said Line. I've got two daughters.
But the idea that you wouldn't do something, the idea
of self censorship is more sinister than I'm setting people. Eventually,
the shouting ceased. All the work I'd absolutely decided I

(09:30):
shouldn't do, but did. Line recalls Close, saying, then worked
very well for me. I'm sorry. Am I supposed to
be rooting for these men to bully the one and
only Glenn Close. That's not going to happen, The piece continues.
I think she understood. Line would say later that I
really loved the novel and that if you feel that

(09:52):
strongly about a subject, there's a chance of it being
half decent. Glenn Close called Irons again. Remember what we do.
She said, we do great roles with great scripts and
great directors, And isn't this that? And I'm turning it down,
thought Irons because I'm worried about what it will do
to my career. Ludicrous? All right, Then he said, let's

(10:15):
be politically incorrect, let's start the waters. Yes, Irons recalls Close, saying,
even though as the mother of a young girl, I
still find it all very difficult. Dude, this is not
the place nor the podcast to be having this discussion.
But Glenn Close deserves an oscar so Jeremy Irons is
officially Humbert Humburt. Filling out the rest of the cast

(10:38):
will be Melanie Griffith as my favorite Charlotte Hayes, Frank
Angela in a restrained performance of Claire Quilty that for
some reason features full frontal nudity in the last scene.
And then, of course Dolores Hayes needs to be cast.
But to be clear, I'm going to be calling her
Lolita throughout this episode because spoiler alert, the character of
Dolores Hayes and all the nuance therein does not translate

(11:02):
into this movie, where you're still very much dealing with
the cultural Lolita character. Here again, Stanley Kubrick had more
or less set the standard of how Lolita the character
had been presented visually up till this time. Nearly all
young actresses who had played the part since were dressed
and styled nearly identically to the way Sue Lyon was
in nineteen sixty two. Speaking of Sue Lyon, she has

(11:24):
this to say when getting wind that there's going to
be a new adaptation of Lolita. Quote. My destruction as
a person dates from that movie. Lolita exposed me to
temptations no girl of that age should undergo. I defy
any pretty girl who is rocketed to stardom at fourteen
in a sex nymphete role to stay on a level path. Thereafter,

(11:47):
Line wants to do things differently, a call for a
third wave feminism era. Lolita is put out and per
the trades at the time. Over young actors audition it
said that Natalie Portman, who had played an abused twelve
year old turned hit Man's protege in the movie Luke
Bassan's Leon the professional to critical acclaim, had been offered

(12:07):
the part of Lolita. Portman declined just a few months ago.
A now thirty nine year old Portman had this to
say about it. I was definitely aware of the fact
that like I was being portrayed, like mainly in kind
of journalism around when the movies would come out as
like this like Lolita, figure and stuff, And I've actually

(12:31):
talked about it. I wrote a thing about it for
the Women's March a few years ago about how being
sexualized as a child I think took away from my
own sexuality because it made me afraid. Portman wanted out
of the roles where she was characterized as a sexually
precocious and consenting underage girl, characters whose hyper competence are

(12:56):
written to imply that it's okay that adult men treat
her the sexual object. Her decision not to play Lolita
makes a lot of sense when you know this. The
press and the public had treated her very exploitatively after
she started in the professional, with many adult men beginning
countdowns to Portman's eighteenth birthday, and she received a number
of terrifying rape threats in the mail. Not to mention,

(13:20):
the director of the Professional, Luke Bissan, was very credibly
accused of rape by a number of women in eighteen
and it didn't stop him from releasing a movie. The
next year, Portman played another sexualized adolescent in Ted Demi
movie Beautiful Girls, in which she and Timothy Hutton, who

(13:40):
is twenty one years her senior, flirt knowingly for the
entire movie, and Portman's thirteen year old character at one
point asks Hutton to wait until she's of age so
they can be together, before Hutton acknowledges that that could
never be. The movie implies that he needs to grow up,
not that it's disturbing that he considered dating a thirteen

(14:01):
year old in the first place. Beautiful Girls was another hit.
Portman's history of pushing against the sexualization of young actors
and her support of Times Up is further complicated by
the fact that she signed a petition back in two
thousand nine that demanded the immediate release of director Roman
Polanski after he was detained in Switzerland, even though roman

(14:24):
Polanski was being detained because he had pleaded guilty to
raping a minor in the US in ninety seven. Over
one hundred celebrities signed this petition, and at very least
Portman apologized for this in saying, quote I very much
regret it, unquote and quote I take responsibility for not

(14:45):
thinking about it enough unquote, but two thousand nine and
we will be talking about this very messy petition later
in the episode. I digress back to the casting of
and title character of Lolita. Other young actors rumored to
have been in the running include Christina Ricci, Melissa jan Hart,

(15:07):
and Jennifer Love Hewitt. In the end, the actor selected
for the part was Dominique Swain, a fourteen year old
raised in Malibu who had an audition for anything in
two years when she was invited to send in a
tape for Lolita's title character. Born in nineteen eighty, she
was bubbly and had braces and was very much a
kid of her era. Her favorite actor was Juliette Lewis,

(15:27):
and she had never heard of Jeremy Irons until he
mentioned that he was the bad guy in The Lion King.
Swain says this in the Esquire piece, but I think
he was kind of disappointed that I didn't know any
of his serious stuff. When speaking with Elizabeth Kay at
age sixteen, she said that she had wanted to be
an actor for the attention, to be in the spotlight

(15:50):
and have everyone's eyes on you, and have control over
the situation. She filmed an audition and a sliver of
her everyday life and read the copy of Nabokov's book
that her manager gave her. After reading it, she told
her manager this, it's all through Humperd's eyes. Lolita doesn't
have a point of view. I think I can give
her one. Swain has flown out auditions for Line and

(16:10):
it's a match. He loves her, is very impressed with
her performance and immediately starts to call her my Lolita.
Line says this of her in a later interview The
dominic Swain was a natural, really. I mean she had
never acted on any level at all, not even at school.
She'd done nothing, and she just she had less nerves,

(16:32):
I would say, than any actor I've ever worked with,
and she really kind of played herself. And to his credit,
Swain says to this day that Line was very careful
and kind with her on set. Here's what she said
during the press junket for the movie back in the nineties.
I think that Lolita is very similar to myself, and

(16:54):
not that we're going through the same circumstances, but that
we both react in whatever way it seems natural. At
the moment. Swayne and Irons did a chemistry test before
filming started, which appear as DVD extras and rack up
hundreds of thousands of yews on YouTube today. In it,

(17:14):
Swayne is fourteen or fifteen and in pigtails, barefoot in
a light purple tank top and shorts on a dingy
gray couch Jeremy Irons whereas a tucked in blue polo
shirt and jeans. They try one of the movie's most
difficult scenes, one that ends in Lolita screaming murder me,
murder me like you murdered my mother. Line is there

(17:35):
and give Swain advice from the sidelines. Do you hear
what I'm saying? I mean, the way I'm reading it
now is is a know your line through your teeth,
and I was I want you to be a better liar.
Imagine it's your old man asking, say, you know when
a few stories, do you know what I'm saying? Yeah?
If I get like it's something just like, oh yeah,

(17:58):
well do that do that? It's hoping should be quicker. Okay,
they try it again. This time the scene gets physical.
You go stats, go of me, you pervert. Don't you
call me a power about that's right. Feast you filthy foreigner.

(18:21):
Murder me, Murder me like you murdered my mother. That
time you just heard was Jeremy Irons slapping Dominique s
wayn for real. The scene ends, Adrian Line gets up
to give Dominique notes and touches her cheek to make
sure she's okay. Irons goes to the other side of
the room and Adrian Line shows her the blocking again.
Good good things in that good things wrong cheat by

(18:45):
the way, Yeah, yeah, that's good. Okay, I think you've
gotta get up, you know what I'm saying. He takes
Dominique's arm shows her where she's supposed to land. At
the end of the line. She sits listening how Adrian
Line wants Jeremy Irons to say the words slut and

(19:07):
jokes about it before they try the scene again. It's
better than English accent. Can try that. Okay, now I'm naught,

(19:36):
So they take the scene again. She nails at this
time so much that Jeremy Irons forgets his lines. Adrian
Line gives Dominique a reassuring hug at the end of
the scene. The tape ends with the two actors posing
for the camera, Jeremy Irons, holding her by her arms
and giving her a kiss on the back of her
head before they set for another take. This tape is
from the Times have changed in some ways and very

(20:00):
much not in others Since Kubrick's nineteen sixty two adaptation.
The Hollywood and global landscape's attitude towards child sex abuse
and pop culture's attitudes towards young girls has changed quite
a bit, and much of these subtle ways, how are
captured in Elizabeth Kay's Esquire piece. In one scene where
the character of Lolita is nude, a nineteen year old

(20:21):
body double is used when Dominique s Wain sits on
Jeremy Iron's lap faking an orgasm while reading a comic book,
a scene that does not appear in the book of
his book. There is a cushion placed between the two
of them. Some people in the set field that this
is important to do, while other people roll their eyes
at it. K writes this in February, when the movie,
after a series of release issues we will be unpacking

(20:44):
in this episode, is finally approaching some level of release.
The Western world, swamped in paranoia and litigiousness, was descending
into bedlam. By striving to keep bedlam at bay, children
were urged to soothe their parents, adults deleted from their
behavior the most instinctive gestures. If you need a pull

(21:06):
quote that summarizes a popular attitude people had around sexualizing
children in the nine nineties, characterizing it as a general overreaction. Well,
there it is. She then quotes Jeremy Irons, who says this,
we are bringing up a generation of children who can
be touched neither in anger nor in love. Huh. This

(21:29):
is lowly to podcast. Welcome back to via pot Cast.

(22:00):
My name is Jamie Loftus, and today we're going to
be talking about the most influential contemporary adaptation of Lolita,
Adrian Lines movie starring Jeremy Irons and Dominique swain Well.
This movie never got a full theatrical release in the US,
lost a boatload of money, and didn't garner any of
the shiny trophies it seemed to be after this movie

(22:22):
has endured for better and for worse. Last week we
talked about its influence on some pop music of the
era and beyond in our entire episode. Next week will
focus on online communities where images and inspiration from the mood, fashion,
and aesthetics of this movie are featured heavily. So is
it the adaptation the world was waiting for in spite

(22:42):
of being controversial for its time. As always, the easiest
way to know is to find out how the director
feels about the project. What say you, Adrian Line? In
the end, it's a love story. It's a strange and
awful love story. I am so sorry, Mr Lene. The
answer was literally anything except saying it was a love story.

(23:03):
But it's not as simple as movie bad. The reasons
it doesn't work, in my opinion, as an adaptation, are
kind of complicated. It has to do with filmmaking choices, absolutely,
But to truly understand the failure slash endurance of this movie,
you need to know how the cultural and entertainment landscape
shifts in regards to Lolita, the image, Dolores, the character,

(23:24):
and how attitudes on both young women's body and child
sex abuse changed between the time of Stanley Kubrick's Lolita
in nineteen sixty two and when Adrian Line's adaptation lurched
into a couple of theaters. So let's go back in
time and find out why our parents are so damaged
as much noise was made about at the time. The

(23:45):
Hollyway Production Code or the Haze Code, was defunct by
nine sixty eight, setting the movie industry up for a
series of shakeups that would give way to a period
of gritty, director driven movie making. The studio system era
of American movie making had ended, and the white male
auteur canon that we are taught are the modern still
mostly living greats began to dominate the industry. Stanley Koper

(24:09):
is one of the elder of these directors, but I'm
talking about your Francis Ford Coppela's, your Martin Scorsese is
George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, Brian to Palma, Sam
Peck and Pop Roman Polansky and Woody Allen, who released
independent hit after independent hit throughout the nineteen seventies. A
number of great movies are produced during this period. But
it needs be remarked that in spite of the radical

(24:32):
changes that this period is hailed with, all of these filmmakers,
like their predecessors in Hollywood, are straight white men. So
this means in the general sense that now many of
the taboos that were placed upon film by the Hayes
code have been lifted, meaning for the purposes of this show,
it was suddenly much easier to show both violence against

(24:52):
women and to sexualized children. Throughout the nineteen seventies, there
are a number of movies that are these weird, unlicensed,
sort of kind of adaptations of Nabokov's Lolita in the
low budget movie space, and once television became an accepted
and commonplace medium, the volume of this low budget, half
thought out production becomes pretty ubiquitous. None of these are

(25:15):
really successful enough to harp on, but I have seen
them all because this is my life now, and these
low budget sort of Lolita movies are universally aligned with
the commercialized Lolita image. In these movies, the underage are
very consenting, and it's society that is being weird about
the relationship between a nearly forty year old man and
a teenage girl. And to be clear, these all concerned

(25:37):
girls of high school age, and none of them concerned
the twelve year old that was Dolores Hayes of Nabokov's book.
There's movies like Anita Swedish Nymphete, a nineteen seventy three
Swedish movie that features a girl Christina Lindbergh as a
teenage nymphomaniac whose nymphomania is cured by Still in Scars Guard,
an older college boy who is nice. Not a good movie,

(25:59):
would not recom end. There's also a blaxploitation movie from
nineteen seventy five called Black Lolita, about a singer who
returns to her hometown to fight the gangsters who have
taken it over. I tried so hard to find this
movie with no luck, but it seems kind of like
Charlie's Angels e and was later renamed Wildcatwoman. Don't know.
Let me know if you have access to this movie,

(26:19):
I would like to see it. But the weirdest one
that stood out to me was a B movie out
of England in nineteen seventy called, depending on who you ask,
either the London Affair, Twinkie or Lola, and stars Charles
Bronson as an author in his late thirties who marries
a sixteen year old British schoolgirl named Twinkie played by
Susan George. The opening scene of Twinkie is about the

(26:42):
sixteen year old Twinky being caught reading a pornographic book
by her parents. Cut to this very weird theme song.
I never met a girl like this For men, it
pretty like school. I think you're growing up two soon,
go take a look at her sixteen summers under month

(27:04):
or two a grown up level when the girls can't
see you freaking you will get up too soon. Little
did Twinkies parents know that she is dating Charles Brownson,
the thirty nine year old author of this erotic novel
she's reading and he's writing about her. This is a comedy,

(27:25):
by the way. The movie is god awful, but it
demonstrates just as clearly as the Lolita musical adaptation from
nineteen seventy one by Alan Jay Lerner, that it was
a profitable decision to frame a forty year old wilfully
committing statutory rape as a comedic hero and the prudish
society surrounding him as the villain. There's even a joke

(27:46):
about this from Twinky about how lenient English law was
on child sex offenders at this time. That happens right
after her parents learned she's having sex with someone their age.
What's a concern in this country? Sixteen sixteen? How do
you know every girl knows that? Anyway? I already chet

(28:09):
with that his lawyer, Twinky jokes that the worst thing
that will happen to Charles Bronson is having his driver's
license suspended for a year and a forty pound fine.
And in the movie that's exactly how things play out.
I said, statutory. All right, now they put on trial
this nim fetishes. How did they me? Scott? Let me

(28:31):
try and explain to you about the English law. No,
our case will be held by one of two judges
to have your driving license suspended for one year. You
will have your driving license suspended for one year and
of forty and you will be fine forty pounds. And

(28:54):
let that be a warning to Twinkie and definitely not
Humbert's love is play it out as very genuine, even
if the fact that she is a literal child appears
to be very annoying to him. They marry while she's
still underage in Scotland, and then elope to the US,
taking Twinkie away from her entire family and everyone she's
ever known. Twinkie eventually runs away and leaves him a

(29:17):
tearful romantic letter, saying it just won't work out at
the end of the movie. The promotional poster at the
time read she's almost sixteen, he's almost forty. It maybe love,
but it's definitely exhausting. Oh, Scotty, you'll be my mommy
and daddy, sweethearten teacher all rolled into one my souper

(29:39):
new grandfather. So that's Twinkie. Meanwhile, back in the US,
the gritty male auteur had completely overtaken Hollywood by the

(30:03):
mid seventies, and some major releases of this era feature
young girls in highly sexualized roles. Two major examples from
this time that are still a part of good movie
cannon today are Jodie Foster and Martin Scorsese's nineteen seventy
six movie Taxi Driver, playing a child sex worker named
Iris who encounters Robert De Niro's in cell king Travis Bickle.

(30:26):
There was a fair amount of controversy about Foster's casting.
She was only twelve when the movie was shot. Much
was made of her character being present during a shootout scene,
and the California Labor Board made it required that she
be evaluated by a psychologist at u c l A
to make sure that she would not be scarred by
the experience. According to Foster, later in her life, she
wasn't scarred by the shootout. What stuck with her was

(30:48):
how her character was treated on set, saying in later
interviews that Scorsese didn't really know how to approach directing
her and that she wasn't very comfortable. Instead, Robert de
Niro generally prepared her for her and guided her through
their scenes. And then there was Woody Allen's Manhattan, released
in nineteen seventy nine, written, directed, and starring Woody Allen

(31:09):
and a teenage Mariel Hemingway starring as a seventeen year
old dating a forty two year old Woody Allen. As
this premise is over and over, this is framed as
a rom com Woody Allen's friends judge in Nabucovy in
terms even what do you do, Tracy? I got a
high school? Really somewhere to back on this one? Manhattan

(31:34):
was nominated for two Oscars the following year, one for
Best Screenplay and the other was for Mariel Hemingway as
Best Supporting Actress. The part she's playing as Tracy, who
reassures Allen's character Isaac that things might work out for
them even when they part. At the end of the movie,
do you still love me? What do you love me?

(31:57):
Do you have it? Swowy's of course, that's what's so about.
I guess what. I turned eighteen the other day. I'm legal,
but I'm still a kid. Can you know such a
kid eighteen years old? They could draft you. A girl
Tracy possesses a wisdom and certainty that I felt when
wanting the movie for the first time. Leads us to

(32:19):
believe that she's not just able to consent, but she's
wiser than an adult woman. Why wouldn't Isaac choose her?
I don't need to tell you this, but this blotline,
praised brilliantly upon its release, could not have aged worse,
and it was considered pretty creepy by a small faction
of critics way before allegations of Allan's sexual abuse ever

(32:40):
even surfaced. Not only did Alan date and Mary Sunyi Preven,
the daughter of his ex partner, Mia Farrow Suni, being
a full thirty five years his junior, Alan was also
accused of molesting his own six year old daughter, Dylan.
While the courts absolved him, Dylan maintains her truth to
this day, with the support of her mother and many

(33:02):
of her siblings, and on Allan's end, Manhattan being considered
his greatest movie and being one that casually permits statutory rape. Yeah,
but in the late seventies, permitting and romanticizing the relationship
between Hemingway and Alan's characters was very okay with most
viewers and critics. The movie was a huge hit. Mariel

(33:24):
Hemingway shared some of her experiences with Woody Allen. She
said that less than two weeks after she had turned eighteen,
Allen attempted to convince Hemingway to come to Paris to
see him. Hemingway said this a relationship was platonic, but
I started to see that he had a kind of
crush on me, though I dismissed it as a kind

(33:45):
of thing that seemed to happen anytime middle aged men
got around young women. Hemingway informed her parents of his request.
She says that I didn't know what the arrangement was
going to be. That I wasn't sure if I was
going to have my own room wood. He hadn't said that,
he hadn't even hinted it, But I wanted them to

(34:06):
put their foot down. They didn't. They kept lightly encouraging me. Ultimately,
Hemmingway declined Alan's invitation and was too uncomfortable to meet
with him. She said that she realized that no one
was going to have their own room. His plans, such
as it was, involved being with me. Hemingway says she
went into his guest room and woke Alan up, asking,

(34:28):
I'm not going to get my own room, am I?
I can't go to Paris with you. I would also
recommend checking out writer Michael Schulman's guest episode of the
You Must Remember This podcast for a close read of
Mariel Hemingway and her sister Margot's early years in Hollywood.
Hemmingway's kiss with Alan on screen in Manhattan was her
first kiss ever when filming the movie at age sixteen.

(34:51):
This is something she shared in common with another seventies
star who was featured in a very different movie about
an underage girl in a relationship with a grown and
I'm talking about an eleven year old Brookshields in a
nineteen seventy eight movie called Pretty Baby. Pretty Baby is
one of the few movies that leads up to lines
Lolita in that centers nearly its entire plot on child

(35:14):
sex abuse in a way that seems conscious of it,
where the Twin Kies and the Manhattan's of the World
regarded statutory rape as a forbidden love that could be funny.
Pretty Baby is about the dangers of child prostitution in
many ways. The movie was directed by Louis Mall, written
by Polly Platt, and stars a then eleven year old
Brookshield as Violet, who is a child sex worker in

(35:37):
New Orleans in nineteen seventeen, living in a brothel. Midway
into the movie, her virginity is auctioned off to the
highest bidder. Violet is the daughter of a sex worker
named Hattie played by Susan Sarandon, who abandons Violet when
she marries a rich man and is able to leave
the brothel. Looming over these events is an adult photographer
named Bullock played by Keith Carradine. He becomes Violet's cure

(35:59):
take her when she is left by her mother, an
arrangement that quickly results in his having sex with and
marrying her, all while Violet is only twelve. At the
end of the movie, prostitution becomes illegal in New Orleans,
so Block and Violet get married and leave town with
a number of other sex workers. Hattie eventually returns to
find her daughter with her new husband after a long search,

(36:22):
terminating the marriage and taking Violet with her to get
an education and live a normal life with her new family.
So first I want to touch on Polly Platt, who
had built up her career behind the scenes of her
then husband Peter Bogdanovich in movies like The Last Picture
Show and Paper Moon. While she was credited only as
a production designer on these movies, it's well documented that

(36:43):
she worked more in a producer and collaborative capacity, but
was never credited as such. There is an amazing ten
part series on Polly Platt by green a long Worth
from called Polly Platt The Invisible Woman, a part of
her Fabulous Show. You must remember this that I highly
recommend to learn more because the context of Platt's life
and where this movie falls into it is really fascinating.

(37:07):
But in short, Pretty Baby was Platt's opportunity to shine.
It's her first screenplay credit, and she's credited as an
associate producer on the project as well, although as always
she was doing more behind the scenes. Platt had seen
a photo of Brookshield modeling in a magazine and cast
her with permission from Brooks mother. Brookshield had a very

(37:27):
difficult childhood. She had an alcoholic mother who was present
during the filming of Pretty Baby and was repeatedly kicked
off the set and interfered with her daughter's daily life
throughout a shoot with already very delicate material. Shielda's mother
even sent Polly Platt to the e er after allegedly
biting her at a bar and breaking the skin. Shields
has chronicled disabuse in her memoirs, particularly the book There

(37:51):
Was a Little Girl The Real Story of My Mother
and Me from as well as by Corina Longworth in
her series on Polly Platt. The story behind Shielda's life
on the set of Pretty Baby alone is deeply complicated,
but to summarize, shield was acting out some very difficult
material that requires she appear naked on screen while eleven

(38:11):
years old, and was dealing with the personal traumas of
an alcoholic parent all before her twelfth birthday. Here's how
Shields reflected on her experience with director Louis mall In.
You know, I had that squeaky, high little kid's voice.
I was not Lolita. I was not I was sweet

(38:31):
and yet um He said that I looked mature, but
I was still a very much a little kid, and
he said that was he didn't want a provocative and
not like a girl cognizant of her sexuality, and that
was definitely me. Pretty Baby is, for my money, not

(38:53):
a badly made or written movie. What it is is
a movie that features the nudity of a very young
child and as actual context in a way that is
really difficult to watch, even without the behind the scenes
context of Brookshields his life at this time. Sitting from
one it is inconceivable that this would or should ever
happen in a movie, but at the time it warranted

(39:14):
a little more than an R rating. Karena Lungworth makes
a convincing argument in her series that Polyplattz script reflected
some harsh critiques on how willing Hollywood was to sexualize
young girls in the nineteen seventies, as well as some
autobiographical references to Platt's own life and anxieties connecting to
cycles of abuse concerning mothers and daughters. Come on, Violet,

(39:38):
why don't you packed? I don't want to go, Violet,
I am your mother. No you're not even say so
all the time. And on top of seeing an eleven
year old naked at several points in the movie scenes
that would have been illegal to film just eighteen years later.

(39:59):
We also se her Kisski Krradeene many many times, even
with the maximum amount of onset support that we know
was not present on this production. It's beyond no longer
considered an appropriate thing to ask of a child performer period.
It was a really difficult watch for me, one made
more difficult with the context. Shield reflections on this time

(40:19):
in her life are very interesting. Here's a little more
of that interview from just wants to be taken away
and taken care of and loved, and in her world,
that's what that was, and that's the way she grew up.
What I found most interesting about this interview was that
it wasn't the onset experience where Brookshields held much trauma.

(40:40):
It was her reception in the press, and this is
a commonly cited experience from actors who have played Lolita
over the years as well. I never once felt taken
advantage of our victimized. All of that came after in
the press. What Pretty Baby has going for its story
wise is that it is invested in the trauma and

(41:02):
the impossibility of its protagonist situation and I think a
lot of that comes down to Polly Platt's writing, as
well as the cinematography done by famous Swedish cinematographer Sven
nike Fist, who I thought it was cool Brookshield ends
up writing an entire thesis paper about later in her life.
But I especially like about Pretty Baby is that many

(41:24):
of the critical moments of this movie we see through
Violet's eyes via Nikifist's camera. This movie is full of
women observing how they're looked at, looking at themselves, looking
at each other. And for all the extremely valid criticism
there is around how Shields his body is treated, this
element of women seeing each other and seeing how men

(41:45):
look at them is very unique for its time. Pretty
Baby starts with a scene of Violet watching her mother
give birth. We see the entire scene where Violet's virginity
is auctioned off for four hundred dollars through her eyes,
and it's not a flattering depiction of the men who
are bidding. In Violet's eyes. They are red and bloated

(42:06):
and old and leering, and she's scared and you can tell, hey,
how do we know she is a virgin? If I
have belied to you? Before satisfaction guarantee. As it relates
to Lolita, it struck me in watching this movie how
Dolores Hayes's life is full of moments like this, but

(42:29):
no adaptation I've seen ever takes the opportunity to show
us her predicament through her eyes, to show us how
Humbert looks to her, even though you wouldn't need to
add a word of dialogue to accomplish this. Violet, like Dolores,
is an outspoken twelve year old trying to navigate her
own sexuality and coming of age while in an extremely

(42:49):
traumatic and impossible situation. For Dolores, it is being kidnapped
and sexually abused by a near stranger. For Violet, it
is being made to be a sex worker at twelve
whose mother is not able to care for her as
she needs to be cared for. Pretty Baby holds a strange,
uncomfortable place in movie history, as it was Pretty indisputably

(43:10):
a source of trauma for its underage actor protagonist. What
makes it stand out is that it was a story
about child sex abuse of a girl trying to survive
under the most impossible circumstances in a cruel world, and
it at least appeared to be aware of and very
sympathetic to that. Granted, the ending scene where Violet leaves

(43:30):
with her mother after being married to Bullock for two weeks,
I think we're supposed to be sad for him. Well,
you cannot take her. I can't live without her. But
unlike all the movies we've discussed so far today, Pretty
Baby was not labeled a story of forbidden love. Even

(43:51):
though the age gap and power dynamics between Bullock and
Violet are very similar to the movies we described earlier.
This isn't an accident, partially because Block is not our
unreliable narrator, and we aren't being told the story through
his eyes. In this movie, our narrative priority and sympathies
lie with Violet Ye Polliplatt's script has no interest in

(44:27):
concealing Violet's trauma from us in the way that Lolita's narrator,
the Abuser does, and Block, while filling a similar role
to Humbert Humbert in Violets life in that we are
rarely asked to sympathize with him. He appears as a meek,
sort of pathetic figure in the story who has played
very ambiguously by Keith Carradine, definitely not a sexy, heroic type. Greena.

(44:51):
Lungworth mentions that this likely would have been different if
Polly Platt's top pick for the part, Jack Nicholson, had
gotten to play the role. So child's abuse was frequently
brought up in movies of the seventies and eighties, but
in the most high profile productions, it was rarely characterized
as something that was too much to worry about, and
in fact, most of the children being abused in these

(45:13):
films were written to be very knowing and consenting. It
says something for this era that Pretty Baby stands out
in the crowd in a way that ultimately feels pretty bleak.
It's a movie that monetizes the image of a naked child,
but unlike most movies we've discussed, it isn't endorsing statutory
rape or molestation, which, if nothing else, demonstrated to me

(45:36):
how very much on the floor the bar for talking
about child sex abuse in movies was at this time.
While Pretty Baby was in production, in three year old
director Roman Polanski was arrested on six charges involving drugging
and raping a thirteen year old girl named Samantha June

(45:57):
Gaily or Samantha Geimer. I'm about to discuss the details
of what happened, including a description from Geymer herself forty
years later. So a heavy content morning going into this section,
fast forward three minutes. If it's not something you're in
a place to hear about. The charges against him were
this rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, allude, and

(46:20):
lascivious act upon a child under fourteen, unlawful sexual intercourse
with a female under the age of eighteen, and furnishing
a controlled substance to a miner. You may know of
this story already. Polanski was famous for movies like Rosemary's
Baby in Chinatown. At this time, Anne had faced the
tragedy of his pregnant wife Charentate, being brutally murdered by

(46:44):
the Manson family in the late nineteen sixties. In March
nineteen seventy seven, Polanski took child model Samantha Geimer to
do a private photo shoot that he claimed would be
featured in French Vogue. Her mother asked to be present,
but Polansky said no, and she eventually allowed it. At
their second photo shoot, Polansky brought Geimer to Jack Nicholson's

(47:05):
Mulholland Drive mansion while he was away on a ski trip.
Polanski gave Geimer aqualude and Champagne then raped her repeatedly.
She discussed this in two thousand nine on sixty Minutes. Yeah,
when he wanted to get into jacuzzi, I knew I
was in trouble, Like, wait, this is not what he's
supposed to be doing. And I didn't know what was

(47:28):
going to happen, but I knew whatever was on his
mind was not a good thing. Romans fame at that time,
he was very powerful, very well known. I think when
you're wealthy or powerful or well known, people don't say
no to you, and you have like this different view
of life where you're accustomed to getting what you want.
We're going into this dark room together. Um, but you know,

(47:51):
he wasn't forceful, and I was scared and confused and high,
and so I just kind of didn't really know how
to resist that besides say I'd rather not know. And
then when that didn't change his mind, I just didn't
know what else to do. I was unprepared. Polanski pleaded

(48:11):
guilty to engaging in intercourse with a minor, spent only
forty two days in prison for violating his parole, and
then fled the country, and he's never returned to this day,
all while continuing to work relatively uninterrupted. He has been
a convicted sex offender since the late nineteen seventies and

(48:31):
won an Oscar for Best Director in two thousand and two.
This is a very complicated story, and I will link
additional resources in the description, But make no mistake, Polanski
clearly did not anticipate any consequences for raping a child
and was outraged that any materialized. He admitted it, and
it didn't stop him from working in film relatively free

(48:53):
of stigma up until very recently. I'll refer back to
that two thousand nine petition to release Polansky that Natalie
Portman signed, along with one other prominent celebrities such as
Brace Yourself, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Darren Aronofski, Assia Argento,
Wes Anderson, Terry Gilliam, Alejandro Innaratu, Tilda Swinton. That one

(49:17):
hurts and as you could guess, Woody Allen, the same
Woody Allen, who was defended by several high profile celebrities
to this day. Oh yeah, and you know who else
signed this damn thing? Jeremy motherfucking Irons he is. We're
going to talk about his track record in part two
of this episode. But for an actor who played the

(49:39):
world's most famous fictional child sex abuser, boy, does he
defend Roman Polanski, an actual child sex abuser? A lot
Portman is, to her credit, one of the only celebrities
who was publicly withdrawn support of the two thousand nine petition,
even though the celebrities I listed were reached out to

(49:59):
withdraw their apport in eighteen after the start of the
Me Too movement. So regrets to tell the Swinton fans there.
I'll remind you here that child sex abuse in Hollywood
was nothing new in the nineteen seventies. It was a
problem as old as the industry itself, beginning with lecherous
studio heads praying on underage stars and high profile cases

(50:20):
like Charlie Chaplin's, And while there were always vocal critics
of those who continued to work with Alan and Polanski,
it certainly wasn't enough people to prevent these men from
remaining extremely successful. After child sex abuse allegations surfaced, Roman Polanski,
as I said one an Oscar. In two thousand two,
Woody Allen was nominated for an Oscar as recently as

(50:43):
I can't separate art from the artist here, and if
you can, please don't email me about it. I just
I have too many ex boyfriends who have just waxed
poetic about how am I going to watch Annie Hall now?
And it's like, I really don't care. I really don't care.
Don't email me about it. Thank you. Okay, let's get
out of the nineteen seventies immediately. Meanwhile, outside of the

(51:04):
entertainment sphere, the eighties happen and a strange but persistent
friction develops. There is now a prevalent cultural fear of
children being kidnapped and murdered. A lot of this is
connected to the Milk Carton Kids campaign, which began in
four as a part of a campaign run by the
National Child Safety Council that sought to bring images of

(51:25):
missing children to the breakfast tables of other families, both
as a public service message and arguably a veiled warning
that if you're not careful, this could happen to you.
A police commander from Chicago told the Associated Press about
the program back in their faces will be there at
the breakfast table. People will have to think about it.

(51:48):
The Milk Carton Kids comprise some of the most memorable
child abduction cases of the century, and once that there
were an incredible amount of national and global attention on
each and every one of these cases were deeply tragic
and very upsetting, as well as demonstrating a pattern on
the press's part to repeatedly spotlight the exact same type

(52:09):
of crime, that being the abduction of a middle class
or upper middle class white child by a stranger. Now granted,
both the Milk Carton campaign and the Amber Alert system
that's still in place today have a pretty high success rate.
And it's starting with the Milk Cartons of the nineteen
eighties that child sex abuse and abduction enters into the

(52:30):
daily lives and thoughts of both parents and children. Consider
the Eton Pat's case in ninety nine, the original Milk
Carton kid who was abducted and killed at age six
at a Manhattan school bus stop. Consider Johnny Goosh, a
twelve year old from Iowa from two or eleven year
old Jacob Wetterling being abducted and murdered in nine nine

(52:53):
on his way home from a video store. A number
of young girls were also abducted, sexually abused, and sometimes murdered,
now covered in the early years of the twenty four
hour news cycle. There's j. C. Dugard, who was abducted
in nine at age eleven and was held hostage for
eighteen years by a convicted sex offender. Polly Class who

(53:13):
was kidnapped and murdered from her own sleepover at age twelve.
In these stories were terrifying, highly publicized, and overwhelmingly featured
young white children being abducted by strangers from middle class
or affluent neighborhoods. As a period in history and in
media that in many ways is still with us, you

(53:34):
might recognize some of the names of these victims because
of the extreme uptick in true crime media from the
past ten years. And with this elevated press surrounding these
types of crimes came stranger Danger programs, ones that most
of us probably remember from school. These were publicly funded
campaigns that warned children not to trust adults they don't know.

(53:54):
These types of p s as existed before the nineteen eighties,
but with the mill Carton kids come a swift hike
in this kind of education. Becoming common in schools. Here's
a bit of one of the more popular stranger danger
p s, a s of the nineteen eighties. You've taught
your children to be polite and friendly, but have you
taught them when not to be? Do you live around

(54:15):
here you're going to school? Well, I could give you
a riot. Last year, fifty children disappeared, many of them
from nice, safe neighborhoods. Come on, I'll talk to your
children about not talking to strangers, and do it today.
A message for your child safety from the American Medical Association.

(54:38):
And I'll let you interpret the extremely loaded phrase quote
unquote nice neighborhoods for yourself. The primary concern that stranger
danger campaigns were trying to combat was child sexual abuse,
but always centered the safety of white and financially secure children.
The framing of this issue during this time arguably led

(54:59):
to an up take in mass incarceration in the US.
And I'm going to link some resources in the description
of where this public discourse led down the line not
to mention this campaign is going on in the midst
of the Reagan administration, refusing to address the escalating AIDS
crisis and American homophobia is at an all time high.
There is a lot of American prejudice cooked into these innocuous,

(55:23):
seeming p says, And all this was done while ignoring
the fact that the danger that strangers posed may not
be as significant as it was implied. Let me explain.
That's not to say that strangers do not pose a
danger to children. In many cases, they very much have.
But what's missing from this conversation, particularly at this time,

(55:45):
is the possibility that abuse and mistreatment could be committed
by someone a child knows already, and that's a very
important fact to leave out. Rain The Rape, Abuse and
Incest National Network indicates that only seven percent of reported
abuse inflicted upon children come from complete strangers. The other

(56:06):
comes from a person already known to the child. So
these programs, while while intentioned, we're seeking to resolve a
problem that was far less common than the stranger danger
videos were indicating. Maybe you remember these types of programs
from when you were a kid. One of my earliest
earthly memories was of one of these stranger dangerous songs.

(56:27):
It was on a Barney VHS tape. You know, the
gigantic purple dinosaur that my generation carries. The psychic weight
of on our backs every day they ever talk to strangers.
That's very good advice, because you just can't tell if

(56:50):
they are good or bad, even though they may seem nice,
even though they may seem nice. Viewing Lolita or Dolora
Hayes in the context of this stranger danger era is
infinitely frustrating because again, I feel that Nobulkov had a
stronger grip on the more common scenario that leads to

(57:12):
repeated child sexual abuse than American legislators did over thirty
years after its publication in nine. Dolores Hayes belongs very
firmly to that group of children that who are abused
by a person who is known to them Humbert. Humbert
was well known to Dolores Hayes before the abuse began.

(57:33):
He had groomed her, he had worked his way into
her family through lies, gas lighting, and violence. This by
far is the most common scenario, so there's a lot
of fear around protecting children at this time. But in
these same years, the culture's willingness to sexualize adolescence continues
to ascend more or less uninterrupted, and yes, it leads

(57:58):
us right back to another disservice of Dolores Hayes come
back for part two of this episode, which we will
be releasing in two days. Sorry, things are too funked
up for one episode. We'll lead to podcasts. An I
Heart Radio production. It is written and hosted by me
Jamie Loftus. It is produced by Sophie Lichtman, Beth Anne Macaluso,

(58:21):
Miles Gray, and Jack O'Brien. It is edited by the
wonderful Isaac Taylor. Music is from Zoe Bladed, theme is
from Brad Dickert and My guest voices this week are
Sophie Lichderman, Miles Gray, Isaac Taylor, and Julia Claire. See
you next time