The MPAA gave this film an NC-17 last week. The distributors decided to "surrender" the rating and release it unrated.
I saw the film a few days ago. I don't get it. Why on earth was this film originally given NC-17???
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Rated NC-17 for a sequence of explicit sexual dialogue.
Clerks. was rated NC-17 for a similar reason.
I found out a lot more after I posted that. Apparently it was only ONE scene, and the filmmakers felt it was too important to remove.
This is only the 2nd time that a film was rated NC-17 for dialogue. Although, technically, it was never actually rated -- they decided not to accept the rating, basically. But if it WAS rated it would have been NC-17.
Considering all the sex, nudity, and violence in movies that get an R I think this is just insane. This is a love story -- it's about loneliness. I watched it over the weekend and thought it was really sweet and poignant.
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It's sexually explicit but it's just a few minutes long. It's hard to imagine it warrants NC-17. I think the ratings board members were just squirming in their seats because they aren't getting any at home.
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The whole concept of NC-17 is ludicrous. The ratings board was establish to inform parents and help them make decisions about what their children should watch. An NC-17 rating means that a group of strangers have determined for the parents what content is suitable for their children.
Total BS
And remember when you use the word "children" you are not only referring to 5 year olds (who would be board to tears during this movie) but 17 year olds. If a parent wants to accompany his/her 16 year old to this movie - they can't because someone else decided that you don't have the right to accompany you child to an adult themed movie were people use dirty words.
Have you seen "This Movie is Not Yet Rated?" Great analysis/expose of the system.
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It's not the second time. Here are some others:
Dice Rules
Rodney Dangerfield: Nothin' Goes Right
Tropic of Cancer
Your Friends and Neighbors (edited to R)
You So Crazy
Freeway (edited to R - some violence may have also been cut)
South Park BL&U may qualify -- nobody knows exactly what had to be cut. Showgirls, Orgazmo, and Bad Lieutenant also had dialogue/language cited as a reason for their NC-17 ratings, among other factors. The Aristocrats wasn't even submitted to the board because it would never in a million years have received an R.
Interesting. Almost all the articles I saw that mentioned it at all said it was the second time. The director said it in almost every interview I saw.
This was the one exception -- this interview says it would have been the FIRST time:
LAist: So, the movie is unrated, but the MPAA has said it would give it an NC-17 rating, which would make it the first film ever to receive that rating without having any nudity in it. I wasn’t bothered by the language or implied singular sex. The dirtiest part of the movie for me was the mattress the brothers picked up on the side of the road to sleep on in the back of their station wagon. Please tell me that didn’t happen in real life.
NASTY NASTY MATTRESS! I agree! (LOL)
shareI suppose that the 'mutual masturbation' scenes were deemed unsuitable. And, it would be absolutely Un-American to introduce such subversive ideas to anyone under the age of 21--they obviously would not understand. Yeah...right.
Excuse My Dust...
LOL I hear ya. Crazy thing is, I've seen plenty of films with similar scenes in R movies. I think about all the R movies that not only show nudity, but show full frontal nudity in sex scenes. In this case, there's no nudity, nothing is shown, it's all fake and just dialogue...doesn't make much sense to me.
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A film like this getting threatened with the NC17 just shows up how pathetic the MPAA is. No sex, no nudity -- at all; Brian didn't even take his shirt off, much less his pants -- no violence, no nothing. Just talk. Guarantee you if there'd been some sort of cathartic violence at the end, like Davy killing Aaron, they would've given it an R without a second thought. Unbelievable. (Kinda like all the fuss over "that word" in Kick-Ass; everyone's fixated on the "C word" and never even mentions that the same character kills a few dozen people...)
C.
Exactly. And I wonder if Brian had actually been talking to a woman if the MPAA had reacted the same way.
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I watched the phone sex scene and I thought that the MPAA's decision was consistent with ones they've made in the past -- explicit verbal descriptions of sex acts have always been treated more harshly than nudity (except aroused genitalia). The dialogue here was very strong and I'm not surprised it got an NC-17.
That said, I don't really agree with their logic. To me, the accumulation of sexual references and images in Bruno, for example, warrants at least the same rating as this. As does the brutal violence of Rambo and Punisher: War Zone.
Bruno was originally given an NC-17...it had to be edited to get the R rating. Unfortunately the DVD has additional scenes but these are what was cut out to secure the R rating. Maybe one day they will release a "director's cut" or an unrated version, or (God forbid!!) the NC-17 version!
shareThe original cut of Bruno apparently featured hardcore sex, so I doubt it will ever see the light of day. My guess is that they submitted a version they knew would never pass with an R in order to drum up publicity for the film.
Having seen the theatrical version, I'm surprised the MPAA didn't demand even more cuts. Amusing film, though.
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The rating *only* makes sense when you realize the ratings system is biased against gay content.
Barely graphic phone sex (just dialogue--nothing *shown*) + Gay themed (tenderly presented, at that) = Kiss of ratings death (NC-17).
Ask yourself, did 9 1/2 weeks or 9 Songs (actually, I think it did,lol) get NC-17 for sexuality/nudity? Did Kill Bill or Sin City get NC-17 for gore/violence/sexuality? Examples like EWP show the system for the *beep* that it is.
This was a pretty good film. The only plus to this stupidity is that perhaps it will get people to go see it who wouldn't have otherwise.
And, I agree about the dirtiest thing in this film being that mattress, lol!
When it comes (pun intended) to certain sex acts, modern American society "has always been disinclined to accept human nature". [That is a quote from "Maurice".]
shareWar is much more common than love. And has been since before we know. So their labeling makes sense. But their preferentiality doesn't. They're not just showing the past, they're advocating the past. But most people lack this insight and are willing to kill not to have it. :)
I'm better than you.
The extremely conservative, biased group of people who have no more training or insight than you or me decided to rate this an NC-17. It's absolutely idiotic! Every single word in this movie has been featured in other films and plays and some TV shows. These people pick and choose and have a false sense of entitlement.
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