The upcoming movie Team America: World Police, a marionette-based spoof from the creators of South Park, received an R rating ahead of its October 15th release. That in itself is not news. What is news is the fact that several scenes had to be rewritten or cut in order for the movie to not receive an NC-17 rating:
…according to the Los Angeles Times, the MPAA board and the film’s producers were at odds over a scene that depicts simulated sex between the wooden marionettes.
Producer Scott Rudin told the Times that at least nine variations of the scene in question were submitted, each one progressively less explicit, before the MPAA ultimately relented and approved with an R rating.
…
[Co-creator Trey Parker commented that] “It’s something we all did as kids with Barbie and Ken dolls. … The whole joke of it is that it’s just two dolls flopping around on each other. You see the hinges on their legs.”Parker told the newspaper he was surprised that the MPAA seemed more concerned with sex than violence in his film, which he said includes scenes in which a puppet likeness of actor Tim Robbins is set on fire and a Susan Sarandon puppet is dropped from a high-rise building.
Although it sounded funny, I was fairly indifferent to the movie’s release until I read about this. Of course, maybe the whole point behind this supposed controversy is to get some publicity…
