Trash

In the winter of 1970, Holly Woodlawn received a telegram from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences informing her that the legendary, Oscar-winning director George Cukor had started a campaign to get the Academy to nominate her for an Academy Award for "Trash," supported by petitions whose signatories included Ben Gazzara and Oscar-winner Joanne Woodward. Ultimately, Holly was not nominated.

Unlike his predecessor John Trevelyan the new UK censor Stephen Murphy had little time for Warhol's movies and, again unlike Flesh (1968), Trash would receive a checkered history in the UK. The film was rejected for a UK cinema certificate in 1971 and only passed the following year in a much shorter form (the distributor having removed around 8 mins of dialogue) and with heavy BBFC cuts which removed heroin scenes, a sequence where Holly attempts to fellate Joe, and an infamous masturbation scene involving Holly and a beer bottle. The initial 1991 UK video release by Virgin Video featured the same heavily cut cinema version, which was then cut by a further 1 minute 12 secs by the BBFC to remove shots of instructive heroin use. The 1996 First Independent Films video release featured the original longer print which restored the dialogue edits and the fellatio/masturbation scenes, though 2 mins 20 secs of BBFC cuts were again made to the heroin scenes. The film was finally passed completely uncut in the UK in June 2005.