Archives by Tag: Zack and Miri
Zack and Miri Can’t Remember My Birthday
Kevin Smith’s struggles with the MPAA continue, and I’m getting more and more aggravated by what’s going down.
This week, you see, Smith and company launched a “Making Of” series for Zack and Miri Make a Porno. This is the same kind of thing that the View Askew crew (along with Chop Shop Entertainment’s Zak Knutson and Joey Figueroa) put together for Clerks II, and it’s already turning out to be just as awesome. There’s only one problem though, and that’s the annoying age verification form that I need to fill out every single time I watch an episode!!!
Last week, our friends over at News Askew broke the story on how the MPAA was refusing to let even Web-only documentaries fly below its radar now. But, even when I read that piece, I had no idea that the Association was going to go to such draconian lengths to keep us from enjoying what Knutson and Figueroa had put together.
There has got to be a way (a cookie, or something) to allow me to enter my birthday only once per visit, but I’m guessing that just wouldn’t have been kosher with the morality police. So, instead, I have to go through the same rigmarole every damn time. And I’m telling you, the idea may be to deter kids from watching these “naughty” videos but it’s going to end up deterring me and other busy, law-abiding adults instead. Kids’ll sit there and come up with a dozen different birthdays (they aren’t stupid, and they’ve got plenty of time), but I have shit to do.
“How does fake poo warrant an NC-17?”
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?
Worth Your Consideration 017 - A GF5 Linkdump
- Trent Reznor and company have launched a new version of nin.com that seems to be heading in a slightly more social networking direction than you’d expect from a band that makes music for generally antisocial people. My profile is here.
- Kevin Smith has updated Silent Bob Speaks with a look at the Canadian poster for the film and a link to a previously unreleased general audiences trailer. The new trailer includes some new, funny bits, but it’s got basically the same structure as the red band trailer. So, it’s a bit hard to watch if, like me, you’ve watched the red band trailer so many times that you’re expecting all of the comedic beats before they happen. When a different joke or beat hits in this green band trailer, I’m totally thrown for a loop, and that’s distracting me from enjoying the thing.
- Bill Melendez, the voice of Snoopy and the Flash Beagle’s sometime animator, has died. As a huge Peanuts fan—my nickname in college was Charlie Brown, in case you didn’t know—this makes me very sad. Ain’t It Cool News has a nice tribute, complete with a couple of You Tube clips.
Topics: View Askew, Nine Inch Nails, Geekforce Reserves
“Everybody Wants to See Anybody F*ck” - Red Band Trailer for Zack and Miri Rules!
The trailer for Zack and Miri Make a Porno is now online at IGN, and it’s brilliant. Jason Kottke calls it “promising” and Ain’t It Cool News says it’s “extra dirty, filthy and funny”.
This is Kevin Smith at his best, with as well-rounded and talented a cast as he’s ever had. Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks are perfectly cast, Jason Mewes and Jeff Anderson manage to not remind me of Jay and Randal, and Craig Robinson is a fucking revelation. Why have I not seen more of his work. Dude is flat-out hysterical. All any of us who have seen the trailer need to do to get a chuckle out of one another is to repeat Robinson’s line, “Her name Bubbles.” I swear…
But my favorite part of the trailer is when the humor goes so far that Elizabeth Banks (as Miri) gives Seth Rogen’s Zack this look:
The conversation which elicits this look is Smith’s most risqué in years. It goes something like this:
Zack: The porn I always liked as a kid was always a spoof of a popular movie.
Miri: Lawrence of A-Labia!
Zack: Fuckback Mountain?
Miri gives him a slightly repulsed look.
Zack: What? Too soon?
I mean, this is coming so close to the edge of unfunny that it might be over that edge. I don’t know if this line was in the script before Heath Ledger passed away, but the fact that it’s still in there, and that the Weinstein Company is using it to promote this film… that line makes me so uncomfortable while I laugh, but still, I laugh.
A few closing thoughts:
- I am no longer worried about Justin Long being in this film, at all. The two or three lines he has in this trailer have won me over. (See my previous post about this for more.)
- Rogen’s delivery of “There’s poo in there,” rivals “Her name Bubbles” for me when it comes to most memorable line.
- Rogen and Robinson’s exchange “Can he slap her ass some more? / Don’t be a fucking pervert, dude.” seals the deal for me, as the final lines in any trailer should.
What did you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Topics: View Askew
Picking on the Porn Star
MSNBC has a piece on Zack and Miri Make a Porno up now and, among other things, it elaborates on which scene nearly earned the film an NC-17.
Smith nipped and tucked the key objectionable segment, a comically over-the-top sex scene between Mewes and Morgan. But the ratings board held to the NC-17 designation, which Smith later got knocked down to an R rating after stating his case to the MPAA appeals board.
So, it was the Mewes-Morgan scene, huh? Remember Kevin joking about how “believable” that scene turned out to be? I don’t think we should be surprised that the scene featuring the active porn star was the one the MPAA chose to pick on. Regardless of whether it’s a cartoonish sequence or not, the guys in the screening room must’ve known that Morgan did this stuff for real in her day job and that must’ve come into play. Don’t you think?
