cannabisnews.com: Film Banned For Showing Pot-Smoking Chimps 





Film Banned For Showing Pot-Smoking Chimps 
Posted by FoM on June 04, 2000 at 20:08:05 PT
By Peter Howell, Toronto Star Movie Critic
Source: Toronto Star
Ontario's film censors have ruled it's okay for humans to be seen getting stoned on pot, but not laboratory monkeys. They've issued a province-wide ban on theatre screenings of Grass, Toronto filmmaker Ron Mann's acclaimed marijuana documentary, demanding the removal of a 20-second scene showing dope-smoking rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees. 
The film's distributor, Lions Gate Films, will appeal the Ontario Film Review Board ruling tomorrow, but Mann, an award-winning documentarian, has vowed not to cut the offending scene, obtained from 30-year-old archival footage done by U.S. government medical researchers. Grass, narrated by Woody Harrelson, had its world premiere at last September's Toronto International Film Festival, which is exempt from censorship. The film had been scheduled to begin its theatre run June 16 at the Bloor Cinema, after a preview June 10 at the Paramount. But all release plans in Ontario are on hold. ``The censor board shouldn't have lit up while watching,'' Mann, 41, fumed yesterday. ``I thought the film would get banned in the United States, not in Canada.'' Grass is screening to rave reviews in New York (the New York Times calls it ``punchy and enjoyable''), San Francisco and Seattle and will open in 17 more U.S. cities on June 16 despite its depiction of the history of pot in America, and its mocking of the response of police and government. The three Ontario censors who ordered the ban here say the monkey scene constitutes animal abuse. In their written report, the censors, identified only as ``Roberta, Janet and Peter,'' complain that the monkeys are ``restrained in lab setting appear(ing) very frightened and uncomfortable,'' though they do not seem physically agitated. The censors said the scene, filmed in 1970, violates the Ontario Theatres Act by depicting ``a scene where an animal has been abused in the making of the film.'' The censors had no objection to the film's many other scenes showing humans smoking pot, nor by scenes showing stoned mice toppling off tables and drugged fish swimming sideways. ``I'm not really sure what the objection actually is,'' Mann said. ``I don't think anyone is going to go home and try these experiments on their pets.'' Lions Gate spokesperson John Bain said his company was appalled by the ruling, which could delay Grass' debut elsewhere in Canada. ``If you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with an infinite number of typewriters, they'd eventually come up with a similar ruling,'' Bain said. Review board censors will rescreen Grass tomorrow. Mann has won prizes for such pop-culture histories as Comic Book Confidential and Twist, but this isn't the first time he's run afoul of Ontario censors. In 1979, censors objected to a scene in his film Poetry In Motion, in which a poet praised female breasts - even though no naked breasts were shown. He appealed and won. Mann notes that Grass is about the suppression of personal freedoms, so ``I wonder if there's a subtext or a hidden agenda to what the board is doing here.'' Does he think the board aims to suppress the film's pro-marijuana message? ``If I smoked enough enough pot and was paranoid enough, I would probably think that was true. But I just don't know.'' Published: June 4, 2000 Copyright* 1996-2000 Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. NewsHawk: Ron MannGrass The Movie - A Ron Mann Filmhttp://www.grassthemovie.com/ Related Articles:Grass : Madness! Communism! Indolence! The Works! http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread5897.shtmlHarrelson Makes Voice Heard on History of Hemp http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread5887.shtml
Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help




Comment #2 posted by Alfred on June 06, 2000 at 20:53:47 PT
ban marijana
please ban marijana!!! I strongly agree that it is ileagle!
[ Post Comment ]

Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on June 05, 2000 at 05:51:35 PT:
Antis pathetically grasping at straws
Weedstock and the Board of Censors...any connection?Not directly, but consider: our opponents used to be able to simply trample our rights by ignoring them. In many jurisdictions, they still do. But with the rise of the cannabis *re*-legalization movement, the increasing amount of scrutiny the mainstream media is focusing on the overall failures of the DrugWar in general is causing the antis to change their tactics. Truncheons and pepper spray are not very politic, especially when your opponents offer no resistance.. and you are being videotaped applying those means and methods with a seeming air of sadistic enjoyment. Such boneheaded tactics have won them censure in the international media. So now, they have to vcome up with something smarter. But only just. They are resorting to using petty and arcane aspects of the law in trying to silence us. One reason is obvious: they can't hold their own in a debate. They know that in a rational discourse their positions would be torn apart. Just bringing up the historically recorded pronouncements of the antis alone (Harry Anslinger's remarks about jazz musicians and ginger colored n*****s and Darryl Gates comments about all pot heads should be taken out and executed by police)are enough to incense any fence sitter with a smidgen of decency. This is why antis cringe at the prospect and desperately avoid any face-to-face debates with us. So they try to end-run the bulwark of Free Speech (or its' Canadian analog)by adhering to regulations seldom used. Or by inventing new laws restricting freedom of assembly that are so obviously targeted against pro-cannabis organizations that it is practically spray-painted on the bills in International Orange.So why are they doing it? Because, right now, they know they are losing. And they are fighting a delaying tactic until they can get what they think will be legislative shields in place (the Anti-Meth Bill and its' anti-First Amendment sections come to mind) before the public finds out what they are really up to. The Supreme Court has a demonstrated conservative predilection to come down on the side of the State as opposed to individual rights. Presuming the *sheisskopfen* in Congress pass this obscenity, the antis are counting on this. They are hoping to silence us when the inevitable challenge to the A-MB reaches the Supremes. Until then, they will be doing what is essentially harrassing actions, and trying to cut us off from getting the message out to the public.Too late for that, guys. Way too late.Like children caught in the act of committing a no-no, they are trying to divert and distract attention from their antics. Until they think they can get the final upper hand. It proves that slowly and surely, if we keep showing them up for what they are, we will eventually win. Because it also proves something I had mentioned before, here: they've run out of lies to tell about cannabis. They know that their BS is falling on increasingly deaf ears. So now, without directly addressing our facts, they are trying to shut us up in other ways.
[ Post Comment ]

Post Comment


Name: Optional Password: 
E-Mail: 
Subject: 
Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message]
Link URL: 
Link Title: