They wanted to test how NC-17 fare at the box office with Showgirls, but they failed big time! If Showgirls did well at the box office, NC-17 films be more open to the public. Blame Showgirls!
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The main actress was the tall girl from Save By The Bell right?
No one wanted to see a former teen star in a movie called Showgirls.
In the doc., they made a good point about Liv Tyler...
no one wanted to publicly hear her talk about sex (masturbating).
Sometimes, it is about WHO you cast in a NC-17 movie, not about the content.
The Nostalgia Chick pretty much hit the nail on the head with this when she was talking about The Host - the possibility that a movie failed simply because it was badly written is never the lesson that the studio takes from a flop.
shareOn the contrary, Showgirls wouldn't have had 100 people watch if it wasn't for the chance to see that celebrity nude. It was a pretty bad movie.
Same would have happened with Liv Tyler. It would INCREASE the audience.
It's like saying "No one wants to hear America's Sweetheart Meg Ryan screaming a fake orgasm in When Harry Met Sally." Yeah, they kinda did.
Had that been one of America's sweethearts, like Reese Witherspoon, bent over in front of Morgan Freeman,
The reason why they refuse to show 18+ films is because "adult" (XXX) is synonymous with porn. NC-17 or X was taboo a long time before Showgirls.
shareX rated films were still shown in theaters though.
You mean Norman Bates Jr. is the baby daddy?
Maybe in the very beginning. When the porn industry started plagiarizing it, the X-rated mainstream movies like A Clockwork Orange were automatically dropped to R-ratings. After that, the MPAA has used the adult film rating as a weapon to censor.
shareIt has NOTHING to do with ONE movie.
You know why NC-17 films have all this trouble?
1. Pretty much EVERY theater now is a multi-screen venue. So, who needs the headache of having to police one screen to make sure NO ONE under 17 gets in there, and deal with whatever crap happens when they eventually do?
2. NC-17 films are NOT porn, but all these pinheads in America somehow think that it is. Blockbuster became the number one video chain, in part, by having no actual porn. Their assurance not to carry NC-17 is all about appealing to moronic parents who think whatever is NC-17 must be porn, or will corrupt their kids.
Wasn't Requiem for a Dream NC-17? Maybe it was unrated. I rented it and it was the director's cut, I think. I thought Midnight Cowboy was rated X, and it's a classic. I remember lines around the block to see "Last Tango in Paris" and "The Night Porter".
Showgirls WAS pretty awful. Your theory may have some weight.
"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"
Wrong. "Midnight Cowboy" received its X rating in 1969 and "Last Tango In Paris" got its in 1973. The rating system as we know it began in 1968.
However, by the end of the 1970s no American studio would release an X rating to a movie. By that time- unlike 1969- it was not completely associated with pornography. In fact, "Last Tango" is a reason why mainstream movies stopped getting X ratings. It became near-impossible to convince many people it was NOT pornography. That was part of the reason for the film's success, but that thinking would poison most mainstream movies.
Add to it the restrictions on X rated movies in many theater chains and that you couldn't advertise an X rated movie the same way.
Come on guys...."Showgirls" has NOTHING to do with it.
I saw Showgirls, and even though it had some laughably bad parts, it didn't make me cringe at its stupidity like Scary Movie 1 & 2 did. In fact, the only part I thought was really dumb in Showgirls (besides the S&M Biker performance which was ironically also my favorite part) was when the main character pulled out a knife and said, "Chill!"
I don't have anything against Elizabeth Berkley, and I hate this idea that former stars should have to just die away.
"There is no escape, John!"
The OP is onto something. "Showgirls" was not an independent film or a foreign film, it was a HOLLYWOOD film. And when it bombed, Hollywood realized they are really not capable of making films like that. But this doesn't mean NO ONE is capable.
It is in the obvious interest of Hollywood though to monopolize the theaters, so they're simply not going to let independent filmmakers or foreign films take up space in "their" theaters. They can't openly forbid the theaters from showing these other films (because the collusion would be too evident), but they can make sure these films don't get an "R" rating from the MPAA and use the excuse that the audience "won't watch them". Well, maybe they would if they just rated all movies for adults "R".
Indie and foreign films really can't compete against Hollywood when comes to PG-rated, over-budgeted CGI crapfests, so these films get that many more screens even as they deliver plenty of violence to "the children" the MPAA is supposed to protect. So basically they "protect" American adults from any halfway sophisticated films with sex in them while they look the other way at violence aimed at children. It probably WOULD be different though if "Showgirls" had been a hit. They would have figured out some other way to keep the indie and foreign films out of most American theaters, but we would probably have a lot of bad "NC-17" Hollywood movies in the theaters today--or they would have dispensed with that moribund joke of that rating by now.
are 18 rated films frequently shown in cinemas in the UK?
shareI'm pretty sure R ratings (The Australian R, the top rating - not the UK system with 2 R's) have no impact on theatres showing a film in Australia. We have similar cultures, I'd say it would be the same for the UK. Ushers do wander around theatres in Australia, if they saw a kid in there they'd just pull them out I would think.
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