Delta Is Screening A Version Of ‘Carol’ With All Of The Kissing Removed

The Oscar-nominated Carol features a heartbreaking romance between the title character, played by Cate Blanchett, and her younger lover, played by Rooney Mara, set against the backdrop of the conservative 1950s. But in an odd move that could have come straight out of that more narrow-minded period, Delta has been offering a heavily edited version of the film as in-flight entertainment that has cut out all scenes involving kissing or any sort of same-sex intimacy.

That became public knowledge this week when comedian Cameron Esposito watched Carol on a Delta flight, and noticed large chunks of the movie were missing — and those scenes all had something in common. “Watched CAROL on a plane & they edited it so the main characters never even kiss. Booooooo,” Esposito tweeted. The comedian added that she understood why an airline may want to edit out sex scenes from a film, but that other intimate moments featuring Blanchett and Mara were integral to the plot. “Totally fine to cut sex from any plane movie,” Esposito tweeted. “But w/o a single kiss, CAROL is a movie about staring.”

After Ellen did some digging and discovered that one of their readers had the same issue back in April, and sent an angry letter to Delta about it. According to the site, the airline responded with an apology, stating in part:

As you can imagine, choosing entertainment that meets all of our passengers’ needs is a tricky business. Although we try to show a variety of videos that have been edited for an airline audience, I’m sorry the edits for the movie “Carol” offended you. … Please know it is never our policy to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, age, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation or similar classification.

A Delta rep also responded directly to After Ellen with another statement, explaining that the cut that was offered on the airline came straight from studio The Weinstein Company. That statement said:

“There were two versions of this film that the studio makes available–one that is edited and one that is not edited. The edited version removes two explicit scenes that do not meet our guidelines. The edited version also removes all kissing. The other version is fully non-edited and includes the kissing, but it also includes the explicit scenes. Unfortunately, Delta doesn’t have the rights to edit the movie, or to make the decision to keep some of that content (e.g. kissing).

Because of the explicit scenes included in the non-edited version, we chose the edited version. This is consistent with what is available to all airlines.”

Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, who received an Oscar nomination for her script, said in an interview with us earlier this year that she knew the film would be a success when she saw Blanchett and Mara in a scene together. But it seems some of that magic will now be lost on Delta passengers, something Nagy herself lamented on Twitter. The screenwriter tweeted that the film now “Makes zero sense without the intimacy.”

But at least passengers can still watch Paul Giamatti act out BDSM scenarios on Billions. Priorities!

(Via: Cameron Esposito, After Ellen, Phyllis Nagy)