How Things Have Changed When It Comes to Obscenity.

In 1969, I argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court involving the banning of the 1967 Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow). My client had been sentenced to prison for showing this film at the Symphony Cinema, a respectable art-film theater across from Symphony Hall in Boston. Several of the justices, as well as some of the lower-court judges, were outraged at the nudity and sexuality portrayed in the film. (In reality, it showed no explicit sex and only a small amount of nudity.) We eventually won the case and my client was spared imprisonment, but the film was banned in many parts of the country, and claims that it was protected by the First Amendment were rejected by several courts.

This past year at the Cannes Film Festival, another film was shown and... Read More