'Innocence being tested': Elizabeth Banks defends 'controversial' scene of 12-year-old children doing drugs in 'Cocaine Bear'
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Elizabeth Banks reportedly defended a contentious sequence in her upcoming R-rated movie, 'Cocaine Bear', that showed 12-year-olds doing cocaine. She said that the scene was all about testing their "innocence."
“It was definitely controversial. There were conversations about, should we age up these characters? We all kind of held hands, and we were like, ‘Guys, they’ve got to be 12.’ It’s their innocence being tested. That’s what was interesting to me about that scene,” Banks said, per Variety.
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'The naïveté of the kids'
The sequence was also defended by Christopher Miller, one of Banks' co-producers for the movie, who claimed that "the naïveté of the kids" made it it "OK." “It’s what makes it so tense and funny. It doesn’t work if they’re teenagers. It has to be that age where you don’t know anything, but you want to pretend like you do,” Miller reportedly said.
The upcoming action-comedy movie, which will release on February 24, centers on a cocaine-fueled black bear's rampage in a Georgia forest. It is loosely based on a true account of a bear, who was found in The Peach State's Chattahoochee National Forest in September 1985 after overdosing on cocaine during an unsuccessful drug smuggling attempt.
“You know, it’s a caper and a romp. It’s really designed to be that and nothing more. It didn’t really occur to us to politicize it at all,” Donna Langley, chorwoman of Universal Pictures said of the controversial drug scene. Langley claimed that she "wasn't afraid of the material" despite the movie receiving criticism and jeers for having an outrageous premise. She also noted that the current movie industry thrived on being "bold, fresh, and different."
Ginormous risk
Banks acknowledged that 'Cocaine Bear' could be a "career-ender" and called the movie a "ginormous risk." While her directorial debut, 'Pitch Perfect 2' in 2015 was a hit, 'Charlie's Angels' in 2019 bombed at the box office. In this context, Banks reportedly said, "I took full responsibility for ‘Charlie’s Angels’ — certainly no one else did. It was all laid on me and I happily accepted, because what else am I supposed to do?”
According to Banks, the R-rated movie may be viewed as the bear's "revenge story" against the drug dealers whose failed operation resulted in its untimely demise. The late Ray Liotta, Keri Russell and Margo Martindale star in the movie.