In 10th grade, we read Shakespeare's play MacBeth. It was a big deal because we were to get to go on a field trip to see a traveling acting group put on the play a couple of days after we finished the book. Our teacher decided that instead of going on to something else, we would waste time in between the book and play by watching an older MacBeth movie.

We get into class the day of the start of the movie and the teacher gives us an assigment to jot down any differences we see in the movie. Then, as she turns off the lights and turns the movie on, she mentions something about having to fast forward through one part. A couple of guys in the front moan, thinking she is going to cut out a bloody fight scene or something. Everyone quickly forgets it, though, and watches the movie.

After about 10 minutes into the movie, at the beginning of one of the scenes with the witches, I get distracted by the teacher. I was sitting in the very back and the teacher was standing right behind me with the remote control. I quickly turn around because I could hear her mumbling. I see her with her head cocked to one side apparently trying to see the buttons on the remote with the only light source coming from the TV. I turn back around, afraid of getting a nasty look for not watching the movie. Right as I turn around, it happens. The movie was still on the witches sitting around a couldron. I don't remember what they were doing...all I remember is that all of a sudden, one of the witches lifted her scraggly dress up revealing the hairiest pubic region I have ever seen. It stays up on the TV the for the next 20 seconds. It turns out that the teacher, who was frantically trying to hit stop and fast forward in order to skip the nudity accidentally just hit the pause button. The class of 30 or so just sat there for a few seconds and then broke into laughter except for a few who just sat in amazement. The teacher finally gave up hunting for the buttons in the dark and switched the lights on revealing her embarrased, beet-red face. She resumed the movie and we watched more of it until the class ended.

The next day, we returned to class assuming we were going to watch the rest of the movie. The first sentence that the teacher said was "I'm sorry, but we can't watch the rest of MacBeth until it is censored". Apparently some kid told a parent what had happened. The parent called up a school board member and the school board member called up the principal. Somewhere along the line someone decided that even though that was the only nudity in the movie, we couldn't watch the rest of it until someone made a copy of the tape. The tape had to have the naked witch scene removed even though we had already watched it. Heck, no one wanted to watch the scene again! We just wanted to finish it. The field trip was the next day, though, so we never did get to see the rest.


2001.08.17@02:12 Chihuahua Grub says the version of Macbeth you watched was probably the 1971 Roman Polanski version. I seem to remember that much of the funding for that flick came from Playboy.

-Just because they fund it, though, doesn't mean they donated any Playboy bunnies by any means.

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