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He brings out a series of cuts to demonstrate what has been done to Lolita. He chooses a notorious scene from the novel in which Lolita is sitting on Humbert's naked lap, "picking her nose while engrossed in the lighter sections of a newspaper, as indifferent to my ecstasy as if it were something she had sat upon, a shoe, a doll, the handle of a tennis racket, and was too indolent to remove."

The first version begins with Lolita blithely reading the funnies astride a nude Humbert. It is gradually revealed that they are making love—Lolita's torso arches in ecstasy as she is entered from the rear by Humbert. Mercifully, it will be kept from public view.

In the next version, the whole lovemaking part of the scene has been reduced to symbolic imagery, Humbert's naked body pressed against Lolita's pajama-clad frame, her face contorted orgasmically.

Lyne has been pleading with the lawyers to let him use a third take, which is almost identical to the tamer version, save for the addition of Humbert's hand brushing along Lolita's naked thigh. It is a cut that clarifies that Humbert is not simply masturbating against the back of his Dolly.

Lyne will soon aver that the mandated cuts actually improve the film.

lo-lee-ta.

ketzal_coatl

“I realize now, that all along, love was just this thing. I’ve always been meant to do this with you. I wrote about you, before I found you, and now I understand all that I was trying to say.”

-William C. Hannan

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