On Tuesday night Meryl Streep hosted an advanced screening of Lee Hirsch’s new documentary, Bully, at the Paley Center for Media. Bully is a film that follows the lives of six families and children for whom taunting, teasing and violence has been an unlivable problem. Celebrity anti-bullying advocates sounded off on the MPAA’s controversial R rating for the film, how the film resonated with their own experiences and how Dhuran Ravi’s conviction of a hate crime, in the death of Tyler Clementi, is raising questions about the line between youthful pranks and serious criminal acts
“I was really upset when I saw it,” Ms. Streep said of Bully. “When I watched it, it brought me back to New Jersey in ninteen fifty. . .—a long time ago. I was eight years old and up a tree and a group of kids was below me and my nemisis, this one bully, was hitting my legs with a stick until they bled,” she said. “It was very lord of the flies—a very nice Republican community.”
We’re not touching that last one.
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