Good news from Norway: Reuters reports that Norwegian farmers, fearing an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, are insisting that Gerard Depardieu be disinfected when he enters their country for a film shoot later this year. It seems the highly infectious disease can be carried not only by clothing, vehicle tires, and migrating birds, but also by overrated French actors.
Even before the foot-and-mouth outbreak, THE SCRAPBOOK supported a Depardieu disinfection. And not because in 1992 he sired a child with someone other than his wife of 22 years, or because we sat through the stink bomb that was Green Card.
Rather it's because of Depardieu's brutish quotes in a 1978 Film Comment piece, in which he related how when he was 9 years old, a friend took him along on his "first rape" in a bus depot.
"It was normal," Depardieu said, "After that I had plenty of rapes, too many to count. . . . There was nothing wrong with it. The girls wanted to be raped. I mean, there's really no such thing as rape. It's only a matter of a girl putting herself in a situation where she wants to be."
As they say in the land of lutefisk, Gerard: Hit the showers.