Two weeks ago we found out that Kevin Smith’s Zach and Miri make a Porno had been slapped with the dreaded NC-17 label. They had appealed the decision, hoping for an R since it tipped over with one scene that apparently showed a little “too much”.
His racy comedy, “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” successfully appealed its restrictive NC-17 rating, and will be released on October 31 with an R rating, which allows viewers under 17 to see it as long as they are accompanied by an adult, distributor Weinstein Co. said on Wednesday.
It sounds as though some well spoken words at an appeal hearing managed to squeak them under that NC-17 rule. I had anticipated that they would have to cut the one offending scene or reshoot it so that it was more implied than blantant. But we will see the original cut in theaters that the MPAA originally felt sat on the other side of the NC-17 line.
Maybe Smith himself offered the appeal. He is such a fine communicator and a smooth likeable fella. He could talk me into just about anything.
Another thing the article mentions is that NO NC-17 movies have been released since 2005, all managing to stay at the R rating at worst. Of course this is referring to the US version of the R rating. Here in this part of Canada, our R has the same conditions as an NC-17 movie. Granted our 18a is the same thing as an American R, and for the most part if its R in the US, we get the 18A.
So have the standards become more relaxed? Some of the stuff we see today in torture porn horror or in crude comedy seems far more socially offending than what we put up with in the 80s.
Or are filmmakers crafting themselves to dodge the stigma of an NC-17 rating that limits their target audience?
