FIRST OF THE SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS

The great foreskin debate

To snip or not to snip? That was the question facing new parent Danae Elon, who didn't just wrestle with the controversies of circumcision -- she made a documentary about it.

Was it always your plan to make a movie about circumcision?

I had always wanted to make a film about it. I thought about extreme rituals, things that might be anthropologically interesting and contradictory, but I could never find a story structure that made sense. So I kind of let it go, until one day I was two months pregnant with my first child and Philip came through the door. We used to live in the East Village in a railroad apartment with a bathtub that was in the kitchen. So he comes through the door, and I'm kind of in this pregnant bliss in the bath, and he says to me, "What are we gonna do about the circumcision?" with a really solemn face -- knowing what I was gonna say to him. So at that moment, it clicked. That's the film!

salon