Jens Jørgen Thorsen (2 February 1932 Holstebro – 15 November 2000) was a Danish artist, director, and jazz musician whose works sometimes created controversy.
Thorsen began his artistic career attending periodically the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
Thorsen also wrote, directed, and starred in a number of films, the most notable of them being Quiet Days in Clichy (Stille dage i Clichy,1970), based on the Henry Miller novel.
The film was to have been made in Britain, but it faced intense opposition from Christian morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, pressure groups, as well as from the Queen,[2] then Prime Minister James Callaghan, the Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan,[3] and Pope Paul VI, who called the film "an insult ... which transforms Christ into sacrilegious bait for filthy falseness".
[7] Thorsen was also a jazz musician and co-founder of the group Papa Bue's Viking Jazzband.