Movies nixed from the Mile High Club

The Sick Phoque Club is upon us yet again; October 2019’s inductee is Delta Air Lines. Near the end of Booksmart, a tense bathroom kiss between Amy, the film's timid, justice-minded lead, and Hope, her high school's "basic hot girl", turns into more: hidden from a house party outside, they engage in a hookup that's been hailed as an unusually frank, on-screen portrayal of sex between two women. But if you watch it on a Delta Air Lines flight, the R-rated high school comedy will skip right through that scene. Reportedly, the in-flight cut also passes over the words "vagina" and "genitals", an exchange about a lesbian sex act, talk of a urinary tract infection, and a bit in which Amy and her friend watch porn in the back of a ride-share. Amid calls of censorship, those edits - made by an outside company that works with the airline - are drawing the ire and confusion of passengers and Hollywood insiders alike, in what's at least the fourth instance when same-sex romance has been stripped from an in-flight Delta movie in recent years. "If it's not X-rated, surely it's acceptable on an airplane," director Olivia Wilde said at an awards show on Sunday night. "There's insane violence of bodies being smashed in half [in other movies], and yet a love scene between two women is censored from the film. It's such an integral part of this character's journey. I don't understand it." Neither do I. They have actual live sex on some flights (it’s called the Mile High Club), so why take it out of the in-flight entertainment?