MEDIA > ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS > 2007

FANNING DEFENDS FILM SCENE, CALLING CONTROVERSY OVERBLOWN
from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 26, 2007
By John Hayes

NEW YORK -- In her last movie, 12-year-old Dakota Fanning had her first on-screen romance, an innocent date at an amusement park in a remake of the children's classic "Charlotte's Web."

In "Hounddog," her new film with Robin Wright Penn that was unveiled this week at the Sundance Film Festival, Fanning's character is the unwilling victim of child sexual abuse.

But last month, before a critic for a conservative publication decried the movie as child abuse and a Roman Catholic activist called for a federal investigation, Fanning said early reports of the scene's graphic nature were overblown.

"It's not an adult scene," she told reporters during a December media junket preceding the release of "Charlotte's Web." "I think everyone thought it was, but it's not. It's a great movie, a Southern story."

"Hounddog" is writer-director Deborah Kampmeier's Gothic tale of a free-spirited, Elvis-obsessed girl in the 1960s who gets little supervision from her abusive father and alcoholic grandmother. Reports out of Sundance describe the controversial scene as the film's most powerful. Ten seconds long and not graphic, the scene includes no nudity, is very darkly lit and shows two shots of Fanning's face and hand. What makes the scene disturbing is the implied context _ what one critic described as "an excruciating sense of you-know-what's-coming."

Kampmeier told reporters it took her a decade to get the film made, largely because of the rape scene, but cutting it was a compromise she was unwilling to make.

"When you're shooting a film, it's the images you line up next to each other that create a story," she told the Associated Press. "If you have a hand hitting the ground, Dakota screaming 'stop' and you see a zipper unzip, that creates a rape."

As described in media reports, the scene is less graphic than the implied sexuality in roles played by previous child stars. In the Martin Scorsese classic "Taxi Driver," Fanning idol Jodie Foster, then 14, had more explicit scenes as a drug-addicted Pittsburgh runaway forced into prostitution in New York. Brooke Shields built her early career on risque roles that included full or partial nudity _ at 13 she played a pre-teen prostitute in "Pretty Baby," and at 15 her character frolicked au naturel, explored sex and had a baby in "The Blue Lagoon." And then there's 14-year-old Linda Blair's crucifix scene in "The Exorcist."

Fanning told critics at the "Charlotte's Web" junket that her innocent on-screen romance with Henry (Julian O'Donnell) was an important part of that G-rated story, and she had some developmental similarities with her character, Fern.

"I think Fern and Henry dating is an important relationship because it symbolizes Fern growing up and becoming more interested in her appearance and wearing dresses and not just wanting to go to the barn," she said. "That's where Fern is in her life. We're probably in similar stages that way, but I've not really thought about boys or guys like that. But I'm sure, I definitely know that it will happen eventually."

Film buyers at Sundance are showing interest in "Hounddog" but are skittish about the implied rape scene. As of Thursday, trade magazines were reporting that the film had not been picked up by a distributor.

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