Mr. Yunioshi may be cut from Breakfast at Tiffany's

When I was a kid I didn’t even know he was supposed to be Asian. I just thought he was some goofy looking butthole who lived in her building.

Auntie Mame's butler Ito is likely on thin ice too.

While I disagree with cutting on principle, I do find the slapstick caricature annoying. Clashes with the elegant aesthetic of the rest of the film.

What is your source that he may be cut from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” other than R1’s suggestion on the TCM thread?

[quote] Why not just take Mickey Rooney out of Breakfast at Tiffany's? His entire performance should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Not that I don’t think it is offensive, but there is nothing in the news or at your link to back up your claim that the character ‘may be cut’ from the film

Even in linked article on the original thread that referenced “Mr. Yunioshi,” TCM and Paramount discuss what an edited Breakfast at Tiffany’s would be like, but decide against cutting Rooney’s portrayal, saying...

[quote] One of the films in the series is 1961’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s with its unforgettable Audrey Hepburn performance as Holly Golightly. She wasn’t the problem there, though. Recently there was a report Paramount was angling to get the rights to remake the film; I suggested to an executive friend of mine at the studio that a better idea would be to just rerelease the original and cut Mickey Rooney out of it. Problem solved, right? Rooney played a garish Asian stereotype, put in the film by director Blake Edwards for some cheap laughs. It would be better off without that character in retrospect, but censorship is just as bad.

“We were talking about that film and how much, you know, that whole storyline where Mickey Rooney’s character feels out of place, intolerant and everything, to the rest of the movie, and so, you could see an argument for cutting things out,” Malone said. “But of course, at TCM, I know we all feel very strongly about keeping films intact and also continuing to play films, even if they’re problematic, because it allows us to have these discussions rather than just ignoring it and pretending it never existed.”

Just curious Op.

Years ago, I lived in L.A. and went to a hamburger stand. The cashier was exactly like Rooney, but was actually Asian, not a made up Caucasian.

MISS GO-RIGHTRY! THIS TIME I’M A-WARNING YUUU! I AM DEFINITELY THIS TIME GOING TO CALLING THE PORICE!!

1984

Rooney'ss character looked like he stepped in from It's A Mad Mad World. Cut the creep.

LOCK ‘IM UP!

that is a pretty creepy bit

I guess 1/2 the cast of Gone with the Wind will be eliminated next. I guess Scarlet's hands will really be fucked up now from all dat work.

Will we be forced to send back our original copies of Breakfast at Tiffany's? Or, will they be worth a fortune when the woke shit is over?

The censors can kiss my moon river.

R12 = Perry Cumo

I thought Perry Cuomo was under investigation.

Culture war thread. Fools.

Then add the " Abraham" number back into "Holiday Inn"!

Hey, TCM, I want to see this. It's great.

Honestly, good. There is a world of difference between this and the Dr. Seuss thing.

r11 is a victim of political correctness gone mad!

Yes, Rooney's portrayal is a hate crime. Cut away.

I may be in the minority on DL, but I've never quite gotten the love for TIFFANY'S. Yes, Audrey is lovely in her Givenchy, but it's a crappy movie filled with lackluster performances (hello, George Peppard) and a complete bastardization of Capote's novella. The gooey, shapeless mess onscreen bears no resemblance to the actual compelling story.

Blake Friggin' Edwards. Please.

It added nothing to the story.

Miss Golightly was a HORE!

Peppard was Hepburn’s best onscreen match imo. I don’t know why they kept putting her opposite old, tired guys like Coop, Bogart and Grant

Orwellian. Absolutely Orwellian.

Truman Capote didn't even like Audrey or the movie. Said it should have been Marilyn.

The Marilyn of the early 1950s could have played Holly, but by the time the film came out she was too old for the part. Holly is supposed to be about 18 or 19. Marilyn at 35 didn't exactly look like a dewy ingenue.

Marilyn? Maybe in 1952. By the time the film was made in 1960, she was pushing 35, a bit too ripe for Holly.

Time to pull Jack Benny Show too....The black man servant?....Unacceptable.

So are they going to take every movie that has the other f word in it and cut that out while they’re at it? Or is it only racial minorities that get babied?

Even if they had hired an Asian actor, it's not a very flattering portrayal.

They decided not to cut it but put a sensitivity warning. I don't think the film would miss him however.

According to what I've heard about and through TCM media, they won't cut that scene because they don't censor their movies or movie history. But what they are doing this month of March is airing such "sensitive-material" iconic films each Thursday evening and having roundtable discussions of panelists talking about and contextualizing such content in the films between the times in film history when they were made and the current era's consciousness and perspectives. I think that's a great "teaching and learning moment" undertaking.

No cutting, no warning. Come on.

Man up, society—learn about these concepts called “context” and “history”.

Can’t we have George Takei digitally edited into the film, they way they do it these days it would be seamless.

I actually liked Mickey Rooney in that part. It was comic relief in a Mad TV way. I also liked the Dr. Seuss books, Huckleberry Finn, and the movie, Gone With The Wind.

This wholw cancel culturing is ridiculous. Yes slap a "cancer warning label" I guess but it's all just a bit too much.

We have people here protesting Halloween since 1980, for god sake. I don't like all the censorship, but I hate for people to feel offnded too. We live in perilous times.

Will Punjab be cut from Annie?

I found his portrayal of a Chinaman very endearing and accurate.

I PROTEST!!!!!!

R36 - exactly.

I totally agree with editing him out, because the character is a cancer on the film, not because of an ethnic stereotype.

You can just see it when Rooney shows up on screen — [italic]“get ready for a wacky tour de force by funnyman Mickey Rooney in a role that will have you chuckling all the way home from the theater.”[/italic]

Meanwhile every millisecond he’s onscreen you want to take a clawhammer to his face.

Can they also restore George Peppard’s character to being gay?

Sum Ting Wong

When Blake Edwards actually cast Asian actors in his movies, the result was Benson Fong as a screaming Chinese chef in [italic]S.O.B.[/italic].

Cancel Mickey Rooney and pretty soon you'll have to cancel both Judy Garland and Helen Reddy, too.

Will they edit out the Asian character from 16 Candles?

Yes, my point exactly, where will all the cancelling end? It's starting to feel like no more freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and life in the U.S. will ironically become colorless and homogenized. Very sad. We will have endless back and forth debates about appropriateness and end up in a world of various shades of grey.

It's offensive, badly acted, unnecessary but don't mess with it.

Is this character where that yellow skin troll got his ideas from?

[quote] Blake Friggin' Edwards. Please.

This guy was only capable of dopey slapstick.

I rue the day poor Julie was seduced by this brainless moron in La La land.

Au contraire, R49. No one who saw [italic]The Days of Wine and Roses[/italic] would say all Edwards could do was slapstick. And if you think slapstick is so cheap, then why don't you try to pull off what Peter Sellers could do so effortlessly in the [italic]Pink Panther[/italic] movies. If Steve Martin couldn't replicate it, then it's harder to do well than it looks.

Julie should get down on her knees and thank God that Blake was self-hating enough to marry her because otherwise she never would have worked in Hollywood again after [italic]Star![/italic].

The character won't be included in the inevitable upcoming modern day re-imagining starring Zendaya anyways.

Blake Edwards made "10", which I thought was pretty fun the first time I saw it.

I can turn Japanese to play him in the remake!

In the book, Yunioshi was a serious character although had an even smaller role than in the movie. The movie should have kept the Puerto Rican landlady as the main antagonist.

R43

Also Cato in the Pink Panther movies, who wasn't as bad as Edwards' other Asian characters, but that's damning with faint praise. Edwards seemed to think Asians were only good for cheap laughs.

[quote] At least Audrey never needed the money badly enough to flash her tits

Nope, she just made Bloodline instead.

Blake Edwards was incapable of subtlety or nuance

Censorship is alive and well in the USA.

The past exists, cutting it away makes it more powerful.

R56 Wait, I remember watching a Bugsy Malone documentary recommended here that claimed to have filmed the largest pie fight ever? Which one was it?

I would almost rather sit through BUGSY MALONE again rather than BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S.

Almost.

R45 Fine with me. John Hughes movies are the sheet cake of cinema.

I love Uncle Remus he’s my friend.

I was a child actor. I played the tar baby. It was my first role.

Star! did not kill off Andrews career. Darling Lili did. And Tamarind seed did nothing to help it. So in desperation to remind people she was still on the planet Julie had to show her tits. It was the only way at this point to garner any publicity. But nobody really cared because it was like seeing your mother naked. She is still basically known for just two movies and except for theater geeks nobody cares about anything else.

When that fat comic does his riff on going to a chinese buffet the owner sounds exactly like Mr. Yunioshi. 'You scare my rife!' It is actually pretty funny. And yes I know the character is actually Japanese.

You know they’re working themselves up to cut out Mammy from Gone With the Wind.

OP is trolling.

R65 but her character was crucial to the story. So much so she won an Oscar for her role. I mean I guess you could cut her but it doesn't make sense what the north was fighting for.

R66 I just wanted to talk about it.