In light of the violence of Bonnie and Clyde, the drugs in Easy Rider, the sex in Carnal Knowledge, in light of “this newfound freedom we suddenly had,” Towne said, it was flat-out regressive to stall a project in 1971 for profanity. The toppling of the Production Code, Hollywood’s cobwebbed bureau of self-censorship, had yielded an extraordinary wave of freer filmmaking that may have raised conservative eyebrows, but, as its strong box office indicated, was at long last luring Americans away from their televisions. For the first time since its inception, Hollywood was a young business again.
