Director Bernardo Bertolucci has admitted on film that he conspired with actor Marlon Brando, then 48, to film a scene in "Last Tango in Paris" in which Brando performed a sex act using a stick of butter on 19-year-old actress Maria Schneider without her consent.
Maria was actually raped on screen. Bertolucci said he wanted her to respond with the "humiliation of a girl, not an actress."
Bertolucci does not regret it or think it was wrong.
Sign to ask MGM, which distributes the film, to voluntarily cease distribution and donate all film proceeds to RAINN, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization.Maria Schneider has now passed, but while she was alive, very few believed her when she said she said the scene was nonconsensual.
"[D]uring the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears," Schneider
told an interviewer in 2007.
"I felt humiliated and, to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci."Maria said that at the time she was new to the industry and not aware that she was not required to perform in any scene without prior warning and consent
. And, as is typical in these cases, it takes the perpetrator admitting it for a victim to be believed. The scene was between Maria, then 19, and Marlon Brando, then 48. Brando and Bertolucci perpetrated a violent sexual crime, documented it and profited from it.
We cannot allow for Bertolucci to be held in high regards in the film community. We cannot normalize this kind of horrifying behavior.Please sign to ask MGM to cease "Last Tango in Paris" distribution and donate all proceeds to RAINN. 