Call it a case of
ratings interruptus. Independent movie distributor
ThinkFilm said Friday that it plans to appeal the
commercially problematic NC-17 rating awarded to
Canadian director Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies.
The only problem is that the Motion Picture
Association of America's Classification and Ratings
Administration says it hasn't officially published the
movie's rating yet, and no appeal date has been set.
Based on a murder
mystery by Rupert Holmes, Truth concerns an
investigation into an unsolved murder that marred the
career of a '50s stand-up comedy team (Kevin Bacon and
Colin Firth). The film includes a menage a trois
sex scene involving Bacon, Firth, and actress Rachel
Blanchard that many observers expect will result in an
NC-17 rating, which would make the movie off-limits for
viewers younger than 18. In addition to restricting the
audience, the NC-17 tag also reduces a studio's
ability to market the movie, with some newspapers
refusing to publish ads and some theater owners refusing to
screen such movies.
According to
sources familiar with discussions between CARA and the
director, Egoyan has trimmed several scenes to the point
where they would earn the less-restrictive R rating,
but the menage a trois scene remains in
NC-17 territory according to CARA. "Our understanding is
that you must first accept the rating, which we did
Thursday, and then you can request an appeal," one
source said.
When journalists
queried Egoyan about the movie's possible ratings
difficulties at a media luncheon at the Cannes Film
Festival, the director said, "I guess I'm naive. I
really had no idea it would be a problem. I just heard
the deciding factor could be thrusting. Apparently,
anything over three thrusts and you're in trouble. Well,
nobody told me. I didn't even do covering shots, so
there's nothing I can cut away to. This is what you
get."
ThinkFilm
chairman Robert Lantos, who also is the film's producer,
acknowledged the challenge in reshaping the scene in
question, saying, "This scene is done using a single
sustained master shot in order to allow the actors the
most conducive environment for intimacy and intensity
and in order to best communicate what happens in the film's
pivotal scene. It cannot be cut without compromising the
central scene of the narrative and thus rendering the
mystery of the film incomprehensible. It remains more
than a bit absurd to me that this scene would garner
an R if shot exactly the same but from just the torso up,
but becomes an NC-17 because the master shot reveals full
bodies." The film is to be released October 14 in Los
Angeles and New York, with a national expansion
October 21. (Gregg Kilday, via Reuters)