“We’re not really showing any penis.” - Elizabeth Banks on Zack and Miri

by E. Christopher Clark | Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Following up on his interview with Seth Rogen (previously mentioned here), Capone from Ain’t It Cool News has an interview with Elizabeth Banks, the other half of the titular dynamic duo from Kevin Smith’s next film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

My favorite quote from the piece once again brings up the asinine nature of the MPAA ratings board’s decision-making process:

Capone: This film smells a bit like a romance under all this flesh peddling.

EB: It’s very romantic. I mean, it’s uber-romantic, this movie. It’s what sold me on the movie. It’s why I can’t believe the MPAA is giving us so much shit, because really the movie has so much heart. Meanwhile Saw 2 is about people cutting off each other’s limbs and blood gushing everywhere is an R. We make this big, heartfelt movie where people happen to fuck each other, and we get an NC-17. I mean, we don’t even show dick. We’re not really showing any penis.

As you may recall, Zack and Miri won an appeal recently and will be rated R, after all. But that doesn’t make Banks’s point any less valid. We, in this country, are way too sensitive about sex and sexual imagery, and way too desensitized to violence. We are nation in love with war and gore and scared to death of love and lovemaking. What a sad state of affairs…

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