Word: film
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...assistant - but it received wide distribution and grossed $129 million domestically on an $18 million budget because the MPAA withheld the taboo rating and gave it an R, which means kids are allowed if accompanied by adults (or if they can sneak into the indifferently policed auditoriums showing the film). Universal, the studio that paid $40 million for the U.S. rights to Brüno and will spend a like amount in prints and advertising, has already said it won't release an NC-17 version of the film...
...will have to get the less onerous R rating. "On its first submission, the film did not receive an R," said a Universal spokesman, sounding like an auto executive putting the best spin on a dressing-down by the Obama Administration, "but it is far too early to say that there is any struggle to get there." Translation: the version of Brüno shown to the MPAA was like an out-of-town tryout for a Broadway show or a novel's first draft - except that the script doctors, or editors, are outside agents with the power to tell...
...Hollywood, you see, the making of a movie involves two crucial groups of people: the creative team, who put it together, and the MPAA ratings board, which decides whether and in what form it can be shown if it is to win the magic R. In rare cases, a film's rating has been appealed to a higher committee, the MPAA's Supreme Court, and won. Generally, though, achieving a softer rating is a matter of negotiation. The board tells you what to take out, and you do it. Or they don't, and you have to guess...
...that can depend on who your backer is. Back in 2006, I reviewed This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's polemical documentary about the MPAA board, which charged that the ratings system had a bias toward films from the big studios and against indie movies. I wrote: "Dick takes a deposition from Matt Stone, who created South Park with Trey Parker. Stone says that when their indie comedy Orgazmo was slapped with an NC-17, they were given no hints in cutting the film to get a less proscriptive rating. Yet two years later, when Paramount was behind...
...moment, Baron Cohen is doubtless playing the uncompromising artist, insisting that every frame of his film be shown as is; and Universal, I'd guess, is exerting its muscle both on the MPAA to approve a version with some shock value and on their star-auteur to throw the board a few boners and get the damn R. Baron Cohen shoots a lot of footage in his docucomedies, and, the studio spokesman told Waxman, "With the quantity of material available, I cannot foresee a problem. It's not even April and the film comes out July...