“How does fake poo warrant an NC-17?”

by E. Christopher Clark | Friday, September 19, 2008

Earlier this month, Salon‘s Stephanie Zacharek interviewed Kevin Smith at the Toronto Film Festival. The broad topic, of course, was the TFF premiere of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, but what’s really great about the interview is when they get into the specific topic of the NC-17 appeals process. I’ve written previously about one of the scenes that the MPAA was demanding that Smith trim, but it turns out there was an even more “disturbing” shot that had to be dealt with, this one involving, well, poo.

Zacharek explains:

[T]he MPAA expressed its extreme displeasure with several scenes in the movie, including what Smith blithely refers to as “the shit shot.” (To explain it here would give too much away, so all you need to know is that the gag involves an unusual camera angle and—I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.)

And later, Smith elaborates on how things went down:

...for the shit shot, I cited “Trainspotting,” when they whip the sheet, and the shit goes all over the family. And I also cited “Jackass,” which was a weird pull, but it was congruous to some degree, because I said, “Look, when ‘Jackass’ was an MTV show, there were tons of articles about how kids were imitating it, and winding up hurting themselves. Then it became a movie, an R-rated movie, in which there’s a sequence called the Fart Helmet, where Steve-o is wearing this bubble helmet on his head, with a hose attached to it with a funnel. And his buddy’s farting into the funnel, which goes into the headpiece, and Steve-o starts throwing up. Then his friend shits into the funnel, and you see it at one point.” And I’m like, “‘Jackass’ is more of a documentary than anything else. What they’re doing is real. That got an R. Clearly, what we did is unreal. It’s fake poo all the way. And how does fake poo warrant an NC-17, versus real poo getting an R?”

Somehow that worked. They flipped it. We left the room, and about five minutes later they came out and said that we won.

Honestly, every new bit of information that I learn about why the MPAA gave Kevin so much of a hassle this time around makes the whole thing seem even more ridiculous to me. Okay, so there’s a shot involving poop. And there’s a sex scene between Jason Mewes and Katie Morgan that’s a little more than over-the-top. But this is the same ratings board that gave Clerks II, with its donkey show, an R right out of the gate. And it’s the same committee that, as Elizabeth Banks so eloquently put it, routinely grants Rs to movies “about people cutting off each other’s limbs and blood gushing everywhere.” What is the big deal?

It’s all about the title, isn’t it? Had this movie been called anything else, I’m guessing it wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much shit for it’s shit scene (and its sex scenes) as it has.

Oh well. The nice thing about all the press that’s coming out about the film now is that the reviews have been uniformly positive. So that’s good. I can’t wait for October 31 to get here, so that I can see for myself what all the fuss is about. How about you?

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