Show Business: The Vandals

Federico Fellini happily plunked down in front of his television set one night recently. Italy's government-run TV network was showing I Vitelloni, a vintage Fellini film that examined a quintet of Roman loafers. Basta! Gone was a scene−"a decisive scene"−where the hero is refused a job with a comedy troupe because he is not a homosexual like all the others. "Cutting an indispensable part of a film like this offends me deeply," wrote Fellini to the television network, "and so from now on I'm never letting one of my films be presented on television."

I Vitelloni was...

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