By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Boldface Gets to Bottom of 'Smoking' Sex Mess
Having evidently learned from Lloyd Grove the dire consequences of skipping a Thank You For Smoking story for dessert, The Times’s Campbell Robertson scampered uptown last week for a party celebrating Jason Reitman’s buzz-packing feature debut. And bless Robertson’s heart, readers can finally anticipate the movie based on its narrative merits rather than the bidding war it provoked in Toronto or the gamy prospect of Katie Holmes fucking:
What happened to the KATIE HOLMES sex scene that was totally missing from the screening at Sundance because I totally heard it was like TOM CRUISE breaking into the projection room or something and it was like a five-hour sex scene and the movie was totally going to get an NC-45 rating how crazy is that?
“It disappeared for a week, just a very prominent week,” said Mr. Reitman (above), who looked as if he had not been asked that question for at least three minutes. “It was a result of a projection issue. The movie you saw tonight had it.”
Oh that scene? That was it?
“The L.A. Times did an article two days later saying, ‘Was it the Mormons or the Scientologists?’ and that’s what set it all off,” he continued. “People started speculating. And I think people just felt like, ‘Well, if we’re going to make stuff up, let’s go all out.’ And people started saying there was nudity, people said it went on longer than they thought, people said it was steamy and sensual and it’s none of that.”
Ah-hah! There goes the goddamned L.A. Times, ruining it for everybody once again. Except “projection issue” sounds vaguely like “wardrobe malfunction” or some other, equally sinister P.R. euphemism for “accidentally on purpose,” don’t you think? Or maybe it is just my prurient side imagining how Cruise foresaw men “projecting” at the sight of his L’il Katie all hot and bothered. Not that there is anything wrong with that–the guy obviously has enough to worry about these days without Ivan Reitman’s kid exploiting his babymaker. Hopefully he will be done with Katie by the time the DVD comes out and we can get the unexpurgated Holmes/Eckhart/Macy three-way that will probably show up on YouTube in a week, anyway. Keep your fingers crossed.
The scenes are sufficiently tame and at sufficient distance that Aaron Eckhart could well be standing up with a male body double, and they do occur just prior to a reel change.