An Interview With the Censor

Hollywood, January 20, 1999--Probably no one in Hollywood is more qualified to comment on the rampant permissiveness and general dirtiness of current film fare than Erwin Putz. A censor of motion pictures for more than 40 of his 72 years, Putz was interviewed in his small but clean office. He poured himself a glass of cold duck ("Every Wednesday morning," he explained) as the tape recorder began to roll.

[Q] Interviewer: From your vantage point of over 40 years as a blue-pencil man--

[A] Putz: We don't like to be called blue-pencil men. I judge the suitability of cinematic treatments.

[Q] Interviewer: Whatever.

[A] Putz: It may be whatever to you, sonny, but it has been my life's work to me. I've raised three children of my own and I support an orphanage in Cuba through my "whatever."

[Q] Interviewer: I'm sorry. It was a flip remark. From your vantage point, sir, of more than 40 years as judge of cinematic treatments, how does the boldness of today's movies compare with the lurid films of yesteryear?

[A] Putz: It's this way: Since the middle Sixties, I've seen pornographic films and restrictions about pornographic films come and go. I've seen things open up and close down. (continued on page 240)Interview with the Censor(continued from page 129) I've seen things tighten and loosen--

[Q] Interviewer: But right now, in the year 1999, are we loosening or tightening?

[A] Putz: You want to know about right now?

[Q] Interviewer: Yes, right now.

[A] Putz: Right now ... right now, I'd say we're in the middle of a preloosening tightening. In other words, before it can get tight, it's got to get loose. You know, you can only pull a rope so tight and then it breaks.

[Q] Interviewer: Well, if I hear you correctly, you sound optimistic. Are you saying that today's film filth is just a phase?

[A] Putz: Exactly. Let me sketch a brief history of pornography in cinema and you'll see what I mean. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, there were more and more nude scenes in movies. Nevertheless, with the rating system, at least our children were protected. But in 1973, when Disney went nudie--

[Q] Interviewer: You mean with I, a Mouse?

[A] Putz: That was the least of it. After Minnie and Daisy came a series of marriage-manual films with Flipper. That fuckin' dolphin was doing it for kids. You bet your ass dolphins can talk. Talk. I'd like to meet the marine scientist who taught that dolphin to say "Dildo." Those were frightening years.

[Q] Interviewer: What happened next?

[A] Putz: Soon there was no place else to go. The kids--young ones, mind you--were no longer satisfied with surface nudity. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, we went through the "pore-and-follicle" period.

[Q] Interviewer: What was that?

[A] Putz: I'd just as soon forget it.

[Q] Interviewer: Oh, come on. It's history, isn't it?

[A] Putz: Well, generally speaking, the films of the pore-and-follicle period were simply replays of the traditional nudie films photographed through electron microscopes.

[Q] Interviewer: You're kidding.

[A] Putz: No; back then, the Young Turks in all those film schools wanted to get down to it. They thought watching a bead of sweat build up during sexual foreplay was the ultimate in cinéma vérité.

[Q] Interviewer: And that's the link between the nudie film and French cinéma intérieur?

[A] Putz: You mean the frog pictures?

[Q] Interviewer: Frogs?

[A] Putz: Yeah, frogs, Frenchmen, frogs, frog pictures. You see, the frog directors began saying that the principally American films described only surface reality. So they went inside. The key film was Petitpois's Le Proctoscope. That was about 1986. Seems like a long time ago. My son Bobby was just going into business for himself.

[Q] Interviewer: What came next?

[A] Putz: Surgery.

[Q] Interviewer: Excuse me?

[A] Putz: Surgery. The surgical period. You see, people laughed "ha, ha" at Le Proctoscope and its imitations. They thought the movement would never cross the Atlantic. "Just a bunch of freaky kids running around with their Super 8 cameras," someone said. Well, society always gets the films it deserves, and Your Heart, My Heart won the Academy Award for best picture of 1991. A team of doctors from Bethesda Naval Hospital split the best-surgeon award.

[Q] Interviewer: The surgical period didn't stop with open-heart surgery, did it?

[A] Putz: Hell, no. Low-budget appendectomies flooded the market. Over in Italy, they started cranking out what we in the industry then called spaghetti tracheotomies. In 1993. Bettina Baker was named best actress for a film in which she had one of her lungs removed.

[Q] Interviewer: Is it true she was discovered on an operating table?

[A] Putz: Gee, I haven't heard that one in years. That's just another product of the Hollywood rumor mill. There's no truth to it. No truth at all. It wasn't that glamorous. It never is. Bettina and her lungs were discovered by an X-ray technician whom she later married. He saw the photographs, took them and her to an agent and the rest is history.

[Q] Interviewer: The surgical period lasted a long time.

[A] Putz: Well, that's because the major studios needed money. In return for low-interest loans, they became affiliated with metropolitan hospitals. Metro combined with that Minnesota clinic.

[Q] Interviewer: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayo?

[A] Putz: Those were the halcyon days of film surgery. You've never seen anything like it. Hollywood was crawling with cripples. Every guy who had a hernia figured he was an actor. Guys and gals with moles, cleft palates, you name it, stormed into town. They hitchhiked, drove cross-country in pickup trucks, anything. There's that story about a starving character actor who was so desperate he walked into the lobby of Warner Bros, and disemboweled himself.

[Q] Interviewer: That's sickening.

[A] Putz: As a censor, I had to agree, and that incident more than anything else put a stop to the surgical frenzy.

[Q] Interviewer: That brings us to the present. We've seen surface nudity, microscopic surface nudity and internal nudity. There doesn't seem to be anything left; yet you're still employed. What's filthy about films today?

[A] Putz: Some perverts have started to cover up parts of the human body.

[Q] Interviewer: You're joshing.

[A] Putz: No, I've got films right here in my office that would make your skin crawl.

[Q] Interviewer: Can you describe one ... delicately?

[A] Putz: One is called Ear Muff, and I think that is self--

[Q] Interviewer: It sure is. Who would make a film like that?

[A] Putz: Kids. College punks. Thrill seekers. They're always trying to do something freaky. It's sensationalism pure and simple. They've got a new one called Eye Patch. I'm supposed to screen it next week. This stuff is spreading like wildfire. I know of at least three 16mm featurettes from San Francisco devoted to elastic bandages. They show people putting on ankle bandages, winding them around their elbows in a very peek-a-booish manner, and so forth. There was a murder case in New Jersey recently where a woman was found strangled by an elastic wrist bandage. Now, you tell me--where do you think that idea came from?

[Q] Interviewer: I suppose the maker of a film like Ear Muff would argue that his work is art and not filth, that it celebrates the ear and that maybe only through a study of the restriction of sound can we truly learn the dynamics of the aural impulse.

[A] Putz: You sound like one of those fancy Kansas City lawyers. Look, I'm no prude. I know that ears are beautiful. They hear. It comes down to this: Is it a serious film or are the makers out to get a quick buck? Just the other day, I turned down a film that purported to be a history of ear muffs. Some guy with a phony anthropology degree made it. I kicked him right out of here on his keister.

[Q] Interviewer: You are in an enviable position. But what can a private citizen do? If John Doe average American sees a dirty movie, what should he do? Write the President?

[A] Putz: That's just it. I don't know if David Eisenhower has the time. He's got his hands full with the war in Vietnam. If he can wrap it up in the next few weeks, as he says he will, maybe we can stem the tide as part of national policy. Until then, it's a local problem.