Sunday night’s premiere of Feud: Bette and Joan was everything we wanted it to be and more; just absolute perfection in in capturing the style of the time and of the way two notorious scenery chewers, Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon, captured two of Hollywood’s most all-time notorious scenery chewers. (You can read our full review here.)
One particularly jaw-dropping moment during the premiere didn’t involve Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’ characters at all, however. During the scene in which What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? writer and director Robert Aldrich (Alfred Molina) was giving his last ditch effort to shop the film out to Warner Bros. studio head Jack Warner (Stanley Tucci), the dreaded “C-word” was dropped.
In the volatile scene, Aldrich had to convince Warner why he should agree to work with Bette Davis again, after she famously sued the studio to get out of her previous contract — and in a heated moment Warner called the actress a “c*nt.” Not only was it a C-word, but a man calling a lady a C-word, which I think we can all agree is the worst kind of C-word.
Feud showrunner Tim Minear explained to The Hollywood Reporter why they decided to make the shocking choice:
“We felt that it wasn’t gratuitous. It was gratuitous coming from the mouth of the character but it wasn’t gratuitous in terms of the story that we’re telling. One well-placed epithet like that is like a bracing, toss of cold water in the audience’s face and it says something. Not if you’re dropping it every five seconds. So that’s why it’s there; it’s there because that’s the ugly soul that we’re exposing a little bit.”
This is not the first time FX has dropped the C-word. Just a few weeks ago, the “Mac is gay” episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (technically on FXX) dropped not only the C-bomb but also the F-bomb and even the N-bomb (there were a lot of bombs tossed around that episode), so one lowly C-bomb almost seems tame in comparison … Not that we should really compare anything to Always Sunny.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
