From Midnight Cowboy to Blonde: A brief history of Hollywood’s most memorable NC-17 battles
Some filmmakers fought back (Kevin Smith) while others made cuts (Oliver Stone, Mel Gibson) when facing the MPAA's dreaded NC-17 and X designations
Film Features Midnight Cowboy
The Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, which started streaming on Netflix this week after causing a sensation at the Venice Film Festival, is the first film in several years to receive an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. While Ana de Armas earned glowing notices for her work in Blonde (the movie’s reviews, meanwhile, are less kind), the film’s NC-17 designation for “some sexual content” came as a surprise, and it remains to be seen how that rating will affect its performance with Netflix viewers.
But because Blonde skipped theaters—it’s the first major studio release to go straight to streaming while carrying the MPAA’s most stringent rating—it managed to avoid the fate of many other films, which have been kneecapped by an NC-17 that scares off moviegoers and theater owners.
The MPAA’s decisions to hand down NC-17 ratings (and to assign X ratings to some mainstream films in the years before NC-17 was created) are often accompanied by controversy. Most recently, de Armas spoke out forcefully after the Blonde judgment. Here, then, are 20 of the most notable (notorious?) films to run afoul of Hollywood’s ratings gatekeepers over the years, along with a look at how some filmmakers were forced to alter their projects to ensure a wider release, and other titles that simply refused, or chose not to, change things up.
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I still have a bone to pick with Sausage Party. When it came out I had been working retail in a grocery store for years and I thought “oh awesome this looks like its for me” and then I watched it and it was fun and I enjoyed the first 3/4s of it a lot. However I made the mistake of taking the film seriously as an audience member and then at the end the film decided to not take me seriously by just abandoning the premise and having the heroes head into “the real world” to kill real life Seth Rogen and stuff…. what in the fuck was that? It’s like near the end they just got bored of making the film and said “fuck you audiences”. I’ll forever be pissed at this film for it.
That’s hysterical, because i’m surprised THAT is what triggered you and not the rape scene.
So you’re forever pissed that in the last 3 minutes and 40 seconds of the film (just to be exact), after which the whole story was done and the extremely weird food orgy was over, that they went meta and made up a silly little plot about going to the real world? I mean, it was kinda dumb, but those few minutes don’t represent the final 25% of the film, and it certainly wasn’t them abandoning the premise—which was already concluded at that point anyways. I highly doubt that that they made those additional 220 seconds out of boredom as a “fuck you” to the audience. If anything, the orgy was the big rug pull to make audiences feel extremely awkward. I barely even remembered the final scene and plot to kill Seth Rogen, because it’s kinda insignificant.
Haven’t seen SP, but it kinda sounds like the end of Blazing Saddles.
“PISS ON YOU, I’M WORKIN’ FOR SETH ROGEN.”
How seriously is one supposed to take a film about animated food orgies?
But the other parts of the movie were pretty realistic based on your experiences? I worked a summer in a toy store and yet none of the toys ever bothered to talk to me.
Desperate Living stands with Female Trouble as Waters best. I like Desperate a bit more. Both are great X rated fun.
my fav is a dirty shame
I’ll take Polyester it’s the only one of his films that I’ve seen more then once.
Francine, happiness is a picnic in
the woods. God, look around you, Francine. Look at the nature. Look,
Francine, it’s beyootiful! Oh, Francine, I got ants in my pants!
Well, this was certainly a list of random movies. Good job.
I remember renting Henry and The Cook… around the same time and puzzling over the X ratings, especially for the latter. Henry was indeed one of the most disturbing things I’d ever seen, especially the infamous family room scene. But it seems tailor-made for Ebert’s “A” rating. I think all this is becoming moot thanks to the very question: “what purpose does the rating serve when anyone can watch any movie without even going to the theater?” I noticed Blonde’s NC-17 rating but really didn’t give it a second thought because it doesn’t affect my ability to see it.
How is Kids not on this list? It absolutely induced more hysteria at the time than most of these movies.
There was a big stink about it. I remember seeing it and thinking it was terrible. Been a long time though.
Much like Henry, I remember just feeling bad after watching it. I mean I’m glad I did because both are such touchstones, but not exactly feel-good stories. “Evil incarnate” is a perfect description of Henry.
But it led to such great things! The creator of that (Harmony Korine) went on to create the “masterpiece” Julian Donkey Boy! And Spring Breakers, which was somewhat better received, but still to mixed reviews. But the idea that some people had with Kids, that Korine supposedly had great insight into the problems of current (that is the 1990s) youth kind of has been disproven. He just likes to shock people.
The studio decided to release Kids without an MPAA rating and just send a notice along with the prints telling theaters not to admit anyone under 17. And it was actually less of a hassle than releasing it as an NC-17 rating because a lot of theaters (especially the ones that have franchises across the country) don’t want to screen NC-17 rated films. There’s a stigma attached to the rating itself.
Didn’t realize that. It’s listed now as NC-17 so my assumption was that was the initial rating.
Yes. It was initially rated NC-17 by the MPAA. Miramax tried to get the rating lowered, but the MPAA refused. Disney had a no NC-17 films rule for all of its studios, even the ones that handled more adult material like Miramax, so the Weinstein brothers. and some of their investor friends bought the film back from Miramax/Disney and created a one-off studio called Excalibur Films with the sole purpose of releasing Kids.
At that point Excalibur Films decided just to release the film unrated because they realized theaters were less afraid of screening unrated films than they were NC-17 rated films.
Especially THAT NC-17 movie, starring a bunch of underaged actors doing outrageous shit. You’ll notice the girl that Telly is with at the beginning never takes her bra off while they’re having sex – because the actress was under 18.
It’s also one of those rare movies these days that you can’t stream anywhere, can’t buy on digital and the DVD is long out of print.
If you’re looking for real nc-17 content, look no further than HBO’s “Industry”. (Yeah it’s a show, not a movie; but dude gets jerked off onto a mirror, then licks it up.)
That’s part of the absurdity of the NC-17 rating in contemporary Hollywood. The MPAA gives a film an NC-17 rating if a director goes two seconds over the allotted time for having a penis onscreen. Meanwhile, The Boys (one of the most popular shows in the country) has a guy climbing up inside his boyfriend urethra.
Yeah, basically anything goes for tv but movies get extra scrutiny. It’s so inane and completely backwards if anything. As for Blonde, the only nc17 content was the abortion vagina cam, and the penisless JFK blowjob during the final half hour. I only watched bc of the rating and was disappointed by an aimless navel gazing bore of a movie.
Lots of above the waist nudity and barely any sex at all, but NC-17? Whatever gets people to watch this long inconsequential movie.
I’ve seen more sexually explicit material on HBO and streaming than in films slapped with the NC-17 rating (see also Tell Me You Love Me, Looking, Boardwalk Empire, Sense8).If they were interested in making adult-oriented, non-pornographic films acceptable and accessible (which I doubt the conservative, anti-penis, anti-cunnilingus, anti-gay sex MPAA has any interest in doing), they could rename NC-17 as MA. It’s already widely accepted for television and streaming (where it’s self-administered IIRC) and it wouldn’t have the X or NC-17 stigma.
I guess the lesson is that you can get away with anything on an MA show. But make a movie with a little too much sex and face the wrath of the MPAA. It’s stupid and absurd.
I guess it was omitted because it’s common knowledge, but Robocop got saddled with an X for violence. Verhoeven made numerous changes to get it down to an R, but in the end what did it was making the non-murder parts of the film more explicitly funny, mainly through the addition of the news and commercial segments. I think to most people the fake TV aspect of the Robocop films is pretty iconic, so I guess… Thanks, MPAA?
Robocop is mentioned in the Showgirls slide.
Between Murphy getting his arm blown off and the henchman played by Paul McCrane getting liquified across Kurtwood Smith’s windshield, I can’t say I’m stunned that was the original rating. Granted Toxic Avenger was worse but I guess being a comedy gave it a bit of extra leeway.
The director’s cut of Robocop makes Murphy’s murder makes him getting his hand shot off look G rated in comparison.
Robocop would have a had more budget for a couple of scenes than whatever Toxic Avenger had for the entire movie, surely. So it was probably considered “more realistic” or some shit when it came to violence.
Yeah I expect Troma had a standing agreement with the MPAA by that point.
I think I remember something about how NBK was given the rating because of the prison riot, as in it wasn’t specifically the violence, it was the “mayhem”
I love some good mayhem in films, I think mother! and Climax from recent years have good examples of what you’re talking about.
they’re like “but not if there’s cops or prison guards”
Tommy Lee Jones’ decapitated head on a pike didn’t help things.
In fact Midnight Cowboy was not rated X by the MPAA; rather, the studio was trying to drum up buzz and gave it that rating itself. At the time the ratings board shrugged, and then, when the film was submitted for a rating after its release, gave it the R it deserved.Still a fun story about the only rated X movie to win Best Picture. They could show it on Lifetime today with nary an edit.
You have the wrong year for Midnight Cowboy, it’s 1969.
heh, nice
So, um. A little bit of a mix-up in the Clerks entry.
*Quick Stop employee Dante (Brian O’Halloran)
I’ve never understood Bertolucci’s explanation that he wanted to capture Maria Schneider’s “authentic surprise and horror” during the rape scene. There’s filming an actor while she’s acting on the one hand and then there’s filming someone’s authentic surprise and horror at being sexually assaulted on the other. He and Brando should have been prosecuted.
“Bigger, Longer & Uncut, an obvious reference (to anyone but the MPAA, apparently) to an uncircumcised penis”To me too!
That cannot possibly be true!
It is! I just thought, it’s much more than an episode (bigger and longer) and isn’t censored (uncut).
Which I guess is why guys like Parker and Stone will fuck with the MPAA at every opportunity – sometimes you get away with it. They obviously don’t have any dick joke connoisseurs on the committee.
It happens. It wasn’t until not being in the room as my college roommates were watching it while I just heard it in the background and after I had seen it many, many times did I catch that “pearl necklace” joke in Half Baked.
Do you get the title of the South Park fantasy role playing game parody “The Fractured but Whole”? It’s just a reference to a miraculous fantasy object that can be simultaneously broken and not, right?
Nope! This conversation has totally changed that one for me too. Apparently I’m just really dense.
No Bad Lieutenant (that nun scene)? Wide Sargasso Sea was pretty bad. No Lara Von Trier? Yeah, I agree too easy.
The character’s name is Dante, the actor’s name is Brian O’Halloran.
Do you also need to borrow a couple of bucks for rent, Brian?
Sometimes the X rating was slapped onto otherwise mainstream (plot-driven, not exploitative) movies because of those movies’ attitudes toward sex. There was a good movie from 1975 with Richard Dreyfuss called Inserts, which was about a porn director in the 30s. It didn’t have much in the way of explicit nudity or sex, but the movie made no apology for its subject matter. Dreyfuss’ character had been a hot shot main stream director, now he wasn’ – but he accepted his current circumstances.
I think the same kind of thing went on with the rating of A Clockwork Orange – Alex is unrepentant at the end, after the Ludovico technique doesn’t work. Maybe if that last scene (“I was cured, all right”) hadn’t been there it might have started out with an R rating.And as explicit as Last Tango was, again I think it was the approach to and attitude about sex that bothered the MPAA. I’m not gonna do the research, but I’d bet there are dozens more movies with more graphic sex scenes that came out of the gate with just an R.
Nah. People still find the rape scenes in A Clockwork Orange upsetting. It was 100% because of the content of the film itself.
You have to remember that ACO was released just two or three years after Hollywood had abandoned the Hays Code, people still find it shocking today, imagine seeing that in a major Hollywood film when Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? was still a recently controversial film.
The most unsettling thing about ACO “main” rape scene to me was how choreographed Alex’s whole approach was. Like how many times did they rehearse that?
Was it that it didn’t work, or they were forced to “reverse” his treatment? I honestly don’t recall, but for some reason thought it was the latter and that the message was society (or at least his doctors) found that kind of treatment more abhorrent than violence.
They were forced to reverse it because of political pressure when Alex’s case leaked because the public was (understandably) freaked out by the fact the government had mind control technology. The book ends with Alex deciding to become good out his own free will even after the reversal of the treatment, which is frankly absurd. Kubrick made the right choice to end the film with the implication that Alex will soon be back to his nasty ways.
By whipping Jesus! Lol
Sometimes the movie adaptation is better than the source material.
Not missing anything.
just listening to https://www2.24musicplay.com/ and https://24musicplay.com/
This article feels like the classic AV Club we all used to love.
I think Neil La Bute’s “Your Friends and Neighbors” got slapped with a NC -17 originally due to what was being said. It’s a good movie, but you need to wash it down with something like “Amelie” after or you’ll just hate humanity.
The Palm D’Or winner was even shown without the NC-17 banner at New York’s IFC Center.*Palme
There is nothing in “Blonde” that deserves an NC-17 rating. There’s very little sex in it. There’s more nudity on cable TV shows (STARZ’s “Outlander” has full frontal male nudity plus many instances of sexual violence) than on most of the movies on this list. Americans in 2022 unfortunately remain quite prude.Were “Battle Royale”, “The Lover” and “The Dreamers” released with an R rating in America?