The joke that caused the biggest controversy of Ron Howard’s career: “Sensitivity, not censorship”
‘Controversy’ isn’t a word anyone would immediately associate with Ron Howard, one of the least offensive directors to ever wield a megaphone. And yet, even he hasn’t been immune from negative publicity, with one joke in a terrible movie causing the biggest uproar of his career.
Some filmmakers love nothing more than courting controversy, knowing that in certain cases, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. It can draw more attention to their film, increase the curiosity factor and entice audiences to see what all the fuss is about, or give an otherwise forgettable flick its 15 minutes of infamy.
Absolutely none of that applies to Howard’s filmography, apart from the first two instalments in the Da Vinci Code trilogy, but those pictures didn’t piss off many people who lived outside of the Vatican. Beyond that, his back catalogue is as clean-cut as the man himself, except for the one time he came under fire for a gag that he refused to cut from a movie he wished he’d never made anyway.
The two-time Academy Award winner called 2011’s The Dilemma both “a shocker” and “tone-deaf”, with a combination of negative reviews and bad box office seemingly scaring him away from making another comedy. It’s crap, of that there’s no doubt, and it wouldn’t have been any better or worse off had he eliminated the soundbite that caused so much backlash.
In the trailer, Vince Vaughn’s Ronny Valentine said, “Electric cars are gay. I mean, not homosexual gay, but ‘my parents are chaperoning the dance gay.'” To try and get in front of it, Universal Studios revealed that it had reached out to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation beforehand, which the organisation implied was an admission that the dialogue had the potential to offend.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper, an openly gay journalist and political commentator, blasted The Dilemma‘s promo spot on national TV, imploring his viewers that “we’ve got to do something to make those words unacceptable, because those words are hurting kids,” while there was also plenty of online blowback.
Universal did replace the original trailer with a new version that didn’t feature the line in question, but the call was made to keep it in the theatrical cut of the film. In the wake of the quip becoming a talking point across print, social media, and television, Howard reached out to the Los Angeles Times to try and clear the air.
“It’s true that the moment took on extra significance in light of some events that surrounded the release of the trailer, and the studio made the decision to remove it from advertising, which I think was appropriate,” he explained. “I believe in sensitivity, but not censorship. I feel that our film is taking additional heat as an emblem for many movies and TV shows that preceded it that have even more provocative characterisations and language.
“It is a slight moment in The Dilemma meant to demonstrate an aspect of our lead character’s personality, and we never expected it to represent our intentions or the point of view of the movie or those of us who made it,” Howard concluded, but even though it was the first time he’d found himself in such choppy waters in the public eye, it was quickly forgotten when the film sank in cinemas and vanished from the public consciousness in an instant.
