Bertolucci slams Ridley Scott for cutting Kevin Spacey from All The Money In The World

Bernardo Bertolucci has slated Ridley Scott for cutting Kevin Spacey from his movie All The Money In The World, following the accusations of sexual assault and harassment against the actor.

The director of Last Tango In Paris was speaking to Italian publication il Giornale (via Deadline), while attending a screening of a restored version of his controversial 1972 movie.

“When I learned that Ridley Scott had agreed to eliminate the scenes of All the Money in the World in which Kevin Spacey was playing, I sent a message to editor Peter Scalia to tell Scott that he should be ashamed,” he said, branding the move ‘censorship’.

He added that he would still be open to making a movie with Spacey, though later said that he ‘totally agrees’ with the #MeToo movement.

Scott re-shot huge swathes of the movie following a number of public accusations against Spacey, with Christopher Plummer playing the role of oil magnate Jean Paul Getty instead, in the real-life story of the kidnap of Getty’s grandson John Paul Getty III.

Prior to the re-shoots, Spacey, who wore extensive prosthetics for the role, was being talked up as a potential Oscar contender for his work on the film.

Controversy erupted around Bertolucci last year, when interview footage was unearthed which seemed to imply that the infamous rape scene in Last Tango In Paris was not pre-discussed with his star Maria Schneider, who was 19 at the time.

He had made the comments in 2013 at an event held in Paris.

“The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting,” he said, adding that he wanted ‘her reaction as a girl, not as an actress’.

“I think she hated me and also Marlon because we didn’t tell her that there was that detail of the butter used as lubricant.”

Though he went on to say that the decision to go about it that way was ‘horrible’, he had no regrets.

Schneider, who died in 2011, said that she’d felt ‘humiliated’ and ‘a little raped’ following the scene, though she confirmed that the sex on screen was definitely simulated.

“I was so angry,” she told the Daily Mail. “I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can’t force someone to do something that isn’t in the script, but at the time, I didn’t know that.

“Marlon said to me: ‘Maria, don’t worry, it’s just a movie’. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take.”

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