Tom Hooper will not cut The King’s Speech

Tom Hooper, director of THE KING’S SPEECH is putting his foot down. “I’m not going to cut the film.”

He’s not f*cking around.

Last week, Harvey Weinstein decided that the film could use a PG-13 rating to “make it as cool as the other movies people are seeing”. Um, what?! Apparently the film wasn’t getting the same amount of attention in his opinion as the rest of the films that were nominated for Academy Awards.

Hooper responded to this at Saturday’s Directors Guild Awards, “I wouldn’t support cutting the film in any way. I think we looked at whether it’s possible to bleep out the f—s and stuff, but I’m not going to actually cut that part.” Helena Bonham Carter backed up her KING’S SPEECH director by saying this, “I don’t think it needs to be cut down. I think every 13-year-old knows [the words], I think every 8-year-old [does]. It’s the whole point of it. It’s not to be offensive. I think they said they were going to put the bleeps. [The film] is not violent. It’s full of humanity and wit. [It’s] for people not with just a speech impediment, but who have got confidence [doubts]. Everyone who has a sense of inadequacy, which is practically everyone.”

Wait? Come again? Bleeps? Has anyone ever seen them play THE DEPARTED on TNT? OH THE HORROR!

Of course, Weinstein responded to this in an interview with Deadline. Here’s what he had to say when Deadline told him that Hooper would not be cutting the word f*ck:

“Well, it hurt us. I think the movie could do even bigger box office than $100 million if we could free ourselves of the rating. The rating is really difficult. The movie is outdoing us in the UK for one simple reason: the rating in England got overturned to essentially a PG-13. Mom, Dad, and the kids are all going to see the movie in England just like True Grit, which is a PG-13 film. You’re getting everybody seeing True Grit. I’ve got four daughters, and all four would never be caught dead at a Western. But because there’s a 14-year old girl and the movie is rated PG-13, they all went with six of their girlfriends. But my daughters can’t see The King’s Speech because it’s rated R. I showed it to my daughter anyhow, and she loved the movie, and so have her girlfriends. I’ve heard from so many educators that this is crazy. I believe the MPAA is sympathetic to the movie, but the rules are the rules. And look, I won with Blue Valentine. I can’t go back, hat in hand, again. We were hoping that, as happened in England, the MPAA would see the movie in context and change the R to PG-13. That’s what happened on Blue Valentine. They rated the movie NC-17, we didn’t make any changes to the movie, and they reduced it to an R. But we didn’t get the contextual rating we wanted. Tom’s got a couple of ideas that don’t involve cutting that will serve the same purpose. I’ll leave that as a bit of a mystery as we examine it further. We are trying to find every way possible to have the film seen by as wide an audience as possible.”