Today in deserving every penny:

"What are you talking about? Everything is
black or white, the Constitution is immutable
and the Earth is 6,000 years old."

-Republicans

Can you believe actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting are suing over a nude scene from a movie they did back in 1968? Well, they are, and they're asking for five hundred million--yes, with an M, but five hundred million is still a lot--dollars. That's for emotional distress and lost work. What a couple of whiners. It's the Nirvana baby all over again. And after fifty-five years no less? Ridiculous, right? Well, ok, at first blush maybe it is. But life is full of nuance there's always more than one blush. Unless of course you live in a myopic, limited world of simple binaries and lack the capacity for self-evaluation.

"No, it was weird, we just got away with
things back then. Bear baiting for example."

-some playwright 

Anyway, the movie in question is Romeo and Juliet and Hussey and Whiting had a post-coital nude scene in it. And ok, it's a famously romantic show...kinda. People think of it as romantic, but it's technically a tragedy. The characters do nothing but make terrible decisions that end in catastrophe. But it's also weird because the leads are like fourteen years old. Which in the 1590's was slightly less weird I guess? And no one would ever cast actual minors in the roles, much less insist they perform a nude scene. Right?

"Artistic reasons...or whatever."

-Franco Zeffirelli

Except Franco Zeffirelii who definitely cast 14 year old Hussey and 15 year old Whiting in his film adaptation and insisted they perform a nude scene. And look, the issue isn't the nudity, it's the underaged-ness of the actors and oh yeah, how lied to they were. By Zeffirelli. Aye, there's the rub. According to the lawsuit, Zeffirelli told them they wouldn't be nude when they signed on, but on the day insisted they shoot the scene nude. For reasons. Reasons that are about to get even grosser.

Any time or place, or if you're Baz
Luhrmann, every place and time.

The play doesn't call for the characters to be nude. Or in the 1500's for that matter. Shakespeare is super flexible in this way. The director can set the action in any time or place, so dressing Hussey and Whiting up in Ren Faire gear and them asking them to take it off was 100% a creative choice. And nobody's saying the characters can't be nude in the morning after scene, but I think we can all can kind of agree that they can't be when minors are playing them. And that it's never ok to lie to and then pressure them.  

And it's really, really not ok that Zeffirelli later admitted that he had a crush on Hussey while this was going on. A crush he--a grown-ass forty six year old adult--had on a fourteen year old child he was in a position of power over. So yeah, five hundred million might sound a little excessive as everyone who could be held directly responsible are probably dead--definitely dead in the case of Zeffirelli--but yeah, here's hoping they get every penny. 

Every goddamn penny.