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Director Olivia Wilde Upset ‘Booksmart’ Lesbian Hookup Scene Cut From Airline Screenings

   DailyWire.com
Michael Tran/FilmMagic

Actress Olivia Wilde made her directorial debut with the film “Booksmart” this past summer. The film featured a lesbian hookup scene. She is now “heartbroken” to learn that the scene has been edited out of the airline adaptations of her film.

According to Fox News, Wilde was unaware of the airline edit of “Booksmart” until a fan tweeted that she noticed the scene missing while watching it onboard the plane. The fan was especially upset over the fact that heterosexual hookups were still kept.

“Tried watching Booksmart on the plane and they cut the ENTIRE lesbian hookup scene like not even a KISS was allowed!” the fan wrote. “Oh but don’t worry guys, the Straights got their kiss.”

Wilde said the edit was a “bummer,” noting that there was no nudity in the scene. “This is truly a bummer. There is no nudity in this scene. What makes it too obscene for airplane viewing? What airline?” she tweeted.

The Twitter user later revealed she was aboard Etihad Airways. However, other Twitter users said they saw the same cut of the film on both Delta and Emirates.

Speaking with Variety at the Academy’s Governors Awards on Sunday night, Wilde lamented the censorship on airline viewing.

“I don’t understand it,” Wilde said. “There’s censorship, airline to airline, of films, which there must be some kind of governing board to determine. We rate it a certain way. If it’s not X-rated, surely it’s acceptable on an airplane.”

“There’s insane violence of bodies being smashed in half, and yet a love scene between two women is censored from the film,” she continued. “It’s such an integral part of this character’s journey. I don’t understand it. My heart just broke. I’m trying to get to the bottom of it; I want people to experience the entire film.”

Actress Kaitlyn Dever, who acted in the scene, was equally angered by the cut. “It’s ridiculous,” Dever told reporters at the Governors Awards. “I don’t even know what to say to that. That makes me so mad.”

In a statement, Delta said that film cuts are made by studios or third-party vendors, and that no policy exists demanding that homosexual content be removed from films.

“Delta’s content parameters do not in any way ask for the removal of homosexual content from the film. We value diversity and inclusion as core to our culture and our mission and will review our processes to ensure edited video content doesn’t conflict with these values,” the statement read.

The topic of homosexual content censored during distribution in other countries or on other platforms has seen an uptick in 2019, kicking into high-gear when Russia edited out key parts of the Elton John biopic “Rocketman” due to its featuring explicit scenes of homosexual activity.

“We reject in the strongest possible terms the decision to pander to local laws and censor Rocketman for the Russian market, a move we were unaware of until today,” Elton John and the makers of “Rocketman” said in a joint statement at the time. “That the local distributor has edited out certain scenes, denying the audience the opportunity to see the film as it was intended is a sad reflection of the divided world we still live in and how it can still be so cruelly unaccepting of the love between two people. We believe in building bridges and open dialogue, and will continue to push for the breaking down of barriers until all people are heard equally across the world.”

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