MPAA Horror Stories

It came from the MPAA!

Filmmakers, care to share a horror story about one of your own run-ins with the MPAA? Drop us a line, or post directly in the comments — anonymity is perfectly acceptable!

Colette Burson, Director, "Coming Soon."

"I expected to get a PG-13 and was stunned into tears when it got an NC-17. Just that day I had read an interview with the makers of '8mm,' who were saying 'We had a surprisingly easy time getting an R for this movie.' I thought, 'That is it in a nutshell. It's okay to kill girls in movies, but my movie has no nudity and yet it's termed NC-17' — which for an independent movie is the kiss of death. It must be delivered to a distributor as an R. The MPAA takes its responsibility very seriously, they're not a bunch of jerks — but they're reflective of the mandate that society has given them, and that mandate needs to change. I'm not the first, I'm the hundred billionth person to say it, but we need to get a little cooler about sex and a little more stringent about violence. The most painful part of these cuts is that they're all huge laughs. There's a scene where a girl rushes into the bathroom and spits in the sink. There was this whole bit of dialogue that had to be cut, where she said, 'Whoo — I just can't swallow,' and Gaby Hoffman goes, 'Who can? A mouthful of sperm has, like, 17 grams of fat.' And I thought, okay, maybe they're going to make me take away that.

"When you've got a scene that works, the audience laughs, and then it's cut for an arbitrary reason that you don't believe in, it's really upsetting. I said, 'I feel that if this were about young boys' — and if this movie were about young boys I'd have a distributor right now with no problem — 'if this were boys and sex, you wouldn't have such an issue.' The board representative said, 'That may very well be true; but it's our job to judge for parents who haven't seen the movie, and if parents have a double standard, it's good for us to think that way also.' What could I say?"

[Excerpted from "Not now, girls," Seattle Weekly, July 7, 1999]

Mark Lipsky, Distributor, "Life Is Cheap... But Toilet Paper Is Expensive."

"'NC-17' is 'X'. It's nothing more than a place-holder, a stand-in. Studios still demand that directors sign contracts prohibiting an 'NC-17' rating; most mainstream media still will not accept advertising for 'NC-17' films; the same fascistic restrictions still limit movie-goers of a certain age; and the de facto censorship that was inherent in the 'X' persists unabated for writers, producers and the few truly independent distributors that remain. Now the story behind Jack Valenti's cheap parlor trick of changing (the name of) 'X' into 'NC-17' began on the lawn of the evil empire's headquarters in Los Angeles in the summer of 1990.

"Earlier that year, Miramax had been slapped with an 'X' rating for Pedro Almodovar's 'Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down.' Their unprecedented response was to sue in open court to have the rating softened to an 'R'. Meanwhile, my company at the time, Silverlight Entertainment, was in the process of releasing Wayne Wang's 'Life Is Cheap...But Toilet Paper is Expensive,' a witty, sharp-edged and mildly profane allegory about Hong Kong's imminent takeover by China. Based to some degree on a hilarious shit-eating scene but primarily on the fleeting glimpse of a pregnant woman's vagina -- in a half-open magazine! -- we were also branded with the 'X'.

"So with an airtight case, a heartfelt statement from Wayne and little hope, I flew to L.A. and appealed our 'X'. We lost, but had another strategy in place. Out of a conversation with my brother Jeff (who's distributed some of the most influential independent and foreign language films of the modern era and who remains one of the most creative minds in the business) came the idea to fight our ratings battle from the inside out. Miramax was very publicly bringing the ratings board to task with tremendous outside pressure but nobody had ever rallied and organized the creative community -- those most directly affected by de facto censorship of the 'X'. Jeff and I co-drafted 'An Open Letter to Jack Valenti' (the text of which accompanies this commentary) and two weeks before our appeal date, I set about tracking down every filmmaker of note -- both American and foreign, mainstream and independent -- imploring them to sign the letter. In essence, the letter warned of "a new era of McCarthyism in the arts" and "strongly" suggested "that a new rating of 'A' or 'M' be incorporated into the system to indicate that a film contains strong adult themes or images." The key point was that this be a new rating so that 'X' would remain an icon of pornography leaving the new rating to symbolize 'legitimate' adult fare...

"At the press conference, I'd announced that 'Life is Cheap' would be released with a self-appointed 'A' rating and, throughout the remainder of that year, we did just that. The rating was accepted by every newspaper in which we placed an ad including most major dailies. This was critical since none of these papers would accept advertising for an 'X'-rated film. Unfortunately, it took an inordinate amount of time for the industry and the trade press to figure out that they'd been duped and by then, the will to mount another assault had waned."

[Excerpted from "EDITORIAL: Is the 'A' Rating Only a Thing of the Past?", indieWIRE, August 16, 1999]

Wayne Kramer, Director, "The Cooler."

"My film got slammed with an NC-17 for a scene of 'suggested' oral sex. The scene starts with a close-up on Maria Bello's face as she experiences an orgasm and cuts to a wide shot of Bill Macy rising up from between Maria's legs, offering up the briefest glimpse of Maria's pubic hair. We don't see between her legs and we don't see Bill servicing her in that shot either. It doesn't matter that we're witnessing two characters in love, involved in a committed relationship, expressing an act that's as common in human sexual interaction as eating lunch or brushing one's teeth. Well, almost.

"The love scene itself moves the story forward as it illustrates the arc of the couple's relationship -- Macy's character is developing more confidence in bed, while Bello's character is emotionally opening herself up to a man for the first time in years.

"My theory on why the board hit the NC-17 alarm is different to the reason they're suggesting. I don't think they're offended by a glimpse of pubic hair. I think they're uncomfortable with realistic depictions of sexuality -- the rawness of watching a woman achieve an orgasm by focusing on her face was much too real for them.

"Why was this so hard for the board to take? I believe it's because we're continually treated like children in American theaters and see few realistic depictions of sexuality. When we do see it in films like 'Monster's Ball' (which had it own skirmishes with the MPAA), it's considered shocking because it's unfamiliar.

"The truth needs to be told and the MPAA needs to be held accountable: the MPAA, in conjuction with NATO (National Association of Theatre Owners), is creating de facto censorship in America because of the suffocatingly narrow and arbitrary definition of what's considered R-rated subject matter."

[Excerpted from "Will 'Cooler' heads prevail?", Variety, August 17, 2003]

Doug Atchison, Director, "The Pornographer."

"[T]he Global Asylum offered to distribute my movie on video and DVD through their deal with Hollywood Video. Realizing this was the best way to get a provocative, award-winning film in front of a broad American audience, I did the deal.

"The catch? I had to deliver an R-rated movie. No problem. The film is discreet. Sex is suggested rather than shown. In fact, one salacious German audience member at the Munich Film Festival demanded to know why the film wasn't 'raunchier.' Of course this movie would get an R. 'Doug, they gave you an NC-17.' That's the distributors breaking the news to me. And they're getting nervous because the movie has to go to the duplicators in less than two weeks. I'm instructed to cut the film, resubmit it to the MPAA, and pray for an R.

"So I cave. It's time to get my labor of love to the audience. I chop away at one of the most emotional scenes in the movie, where the lonely lead character is getting serviced by a call girl with whom he'd rather just have a conversation — and seven head bobs are reduced to two. Then we cut 15 seconds of thrusting out of the 'woman on top' sex scene and ship it back to the MPAA watchdogs. Three days later, they come back with another NC-17.

"I'm indignant. My distributors worry we'll miss the deadline. 'Can't you just cut both scenes out?' No, that would render the rest of the movie illogical. What's wrong with those MPAA puritans, I wonder — I've seen far worse in plenty of R-rated movies, why are they picking on me? Because they can. I'm not Miramax. I can't hire Alan Dershowitz to appeal my NC-17 like he did with 'Clerks.' I can't afford to resubmit and resubmit until the MPAA just gets weary of my persistence—a la 'South Park.' And I don't hold the clout of a Steven Spielberg, whose 'Saving Private Ryan' sailed through to an 'R' — blood, guts, and all. The MPAA can do what they want."

[Excerpted from "The MPAA vs. The Pornographer," Moviemaker, Issue #40]