This image was lost some time after publication.

Actor John C. Reilly (Magnolia, pretty much everything filmed in the last 10 years), walked off the Swedish set of director Lars von Trier's Manderlay to protest the on-screen killing of a donkey. Said a spokeswoman, "We tried very hard to use a puppet instead of a real donkey because we really needed to show a donkey being killed for the film, but when that didn t work we approached a vet and asked him to provide us with an animal that was due to be slaughtered anyway."

Von Trier, of course, is an artiste, and must achieve a precise level of decrepit donkey-offing verisimilitude, burro-loving American actors be damned.