Then, the Global Asylum offered to distribute my movie on video and DVD through their deal with Hollywood Video. Realizing this was the best way to get a provocative, award-winning film in front of a broad American audience, I did the deal.

The catch? I had to deliver an R-rated movie. No problem. The film is discreet. Sex is suggested rather than shown. In fact, one salacious German audience member at the Munich Film Festival demanded to know why the film wasn’t “raunchier.” Of course this movie would get an R. “Doug, they gave you an NC-17.” That’s the distributors breaking the news to me. And they’re getting nervous because the movie has to go to the duplicators in less than two weeks. I’m instructed to cut the film, resubmit it to the MPAA, and pray for an R.

Why can’t Hollywood Video just release it non-rated? “Because it’s against company policy.” Well, why can’t the MPAA see that my film is not exploitation—but an indictment of the adult video business?? “The ratings board realizes that,” I’m told, “In fact, they liked the film’s ‘message.’” They just didn’t like the number of head bobs and pelvic thrusts. Exasperated, I demand to know specifically what they want removed. Well, the MPAA tries not to deal in specifics. They don’t want to come off as “censors.” But they will tell us that seven “head bobs” is way too many. And they really aren’t comfortable with the scene where a scheming female porn producer willfully makes love to my protagonist. The ratings board suggests that to expedite things, we simply resubmit the re-edited scenes rather than the whole movie.

So I cave. It’s time to get my labor of love to the audience. I chop away at one of the most emotional scenes in the movie, where the lonely lead character is getting serviced by a call girl with whom he’d rather just have a conversation—and seven head bobs are reduced to two. Then we cut 15 seconds of thrusting out of the “woman on top” sex scene and ship it back to the MPAA watchdogs. Three days later, they come back with another NC-17. I’m indignant. My distributors worry we’ll miss the deadline. “Can’t you just cut both scenes out?” No, that would render the rest of the movie illogical. What’s wrong with those MPAA puritans, I wonder—I’ve seen far worse in plenty of R-rated movies, why are they picking on me? Because they can. I’m not Miramax. I can’t hire Alan Dershowitz to appeal my NC-17 like he did with Clerks. I can’t afford to resubmit and resubmit until the MPAA just gets weary of my persistence—a la South Park. And I don’t hold the clout of a Steven Spielberg, whose Saving Private Ryan sailed through to an ‘R’ — blood, guts, and all. The MPAA can do what they want. And what they want is still fewer head bobs and less pelvic thrusting. I demand to speak with them. I’m ready to decry this injustice. Ready to vehemently argue until they are overwhelmed by the clarity of my logic, the passion of my plea. I’m not ready to talk to a woman who sounds like my grandmother. She calls herself Charlene. She is so sweet and so nice, I’m disarmed. I imagine her knitting shawls, baking cookies, and keeping tally of pelvic thrusts.

She tells me how much she liked my movie. “If you liked it to so much, Charlene, why do you keep giving it an NC-17?” “The rating has nothing to do with the film’s quality, Doug. And you know, I think it was a mistake for you to resubmit ONLY the sex scenes. Then it was concentrated sex, and that was just too hard to take.” I don’t remind her it was the MPAA’s suggestion to do this. I bring up the oral sex scene. I’m concerned that if we cut the “head bobs” down any further, the audience won’t know what’s going on. “Don’t worry, Doug. If she’s down there, they’ll know what she’s doing. You have to realize,” Charlene explains, “people react very strongly to oral.” Well, I know I do. But that doesn’t seem like the right point to make. Particularly when Charlene suddenly starts expressing worry over how the character, dissatisfied with the call-girl’s performance, then “adjusts himself” and zips up his pants. “It’s far too graphic,” she asserts. “Yes, but Charlene, you’re now t

alking about something that occurs in the middle of the shot. I can’t cut that out, because there’s nothing to cut away to.”
“I don’t understand technical things,” she tells me. “I just know how I feel.”
So here’s an organization whose job is to tell moviemakers how to edit their movies and yet they don’t even know what a cutaway shot is. “Look, Charlene, how many head bobs will you let me have? One? One and a half?” She laughs. “I’ve had people ask for seconds, for frames—but never head bobs.”
Well, such is the currency for which we barter in a film called The Pornographer. We vaguely settle on one and a half bobs. Just enough to decipher what’s happening—not too much to get anyone excited. And then we’re on to the pelvic thrusts in Objectionable Scene Number Two. I discover that what really got the stalwarts at the ratings board in a tizzy was the fact that the man and woman “climax together—in the same shot.” Maybe if I’d stuck to tradition and had the man reach orgasm alone, everything would have been OK.

“You have to understand, Doug, this is all for the parents,” Charlene kindly explains. I guess simultaneous orgasms and parenting are somehow mutually exclusive. I also wonder what parent in his or her right mind would rent my movie for the kids. “Look, Bobby. Look, Susie. We rented The Little Mermaid, Pokemon, and The Pornographer. Let’s make popcorn!” Shouldn’t the very title of my film be enough of a warning to parents? Charlene doesn’t think so. The sex makes her uncomfortable. And it seems making people comfortable is more important than actually shielding children from issues/40/images that might influence destructive behavior. Suggest a bullet to the brain or a needle to the vein, and you’ll easily get an R. Suggest a blow job—and you’re history.

But I worry there is more going on here; another agenda.

The same agenda I suspected was being pursued by the Screen Actors Guild, the city permit office, and all the other bureaucrats who I felt were getting in the way of making this movie. Like they want to teach us who’s boss, so that when we grow up and become big studio moviemakers, we won’t give them a hard time. I sense that it’s not so much the content of my movie that is bothering Charlene and company, but my attitude. Like they just want to know I’m willing to follow the steps they’ve prescribed. So I shave off half a head bob. I dampen the depiction of orgasmic bliss. And I get an R. Three days before the movie is due.

Now the children of the world are safe. Their parents can rent my movie, and although they won’t get the exact same experience as the audiences at the festivals in Montreal or Santa Barbara or Slovakia—they will be protected from the scourge of excessive bobbage ... Unless they watch The Pornographer on pay-per-view, where they’ve agreed to show the “uncut” version. MM