Yesterday, SlashFilm broke news of a request WB had sent to theaters asking them to pull the Hangover 2 trailer that had been playing before Source Code.  Many speculated as to why, but as with many things, it all seems to go back to monkey BJs.

The MPAA approves trailers before they are placed in front of particular movies. In this case, the trailer for the “Hangover” follow-up — which, among other scenes, includes a visual gag involving a water bottle and a monkey performing a simulated sex act — was approved to run only ahead of R-rated movies. It shouldn’t have run before “Source Code,” which is rated PG-13, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak about it publicly.

Update, 12:37 p.m.: Warner Bros. has issued a statement, saying, “In our haste to meet the placement schedule for this trailer, we failed to properly vet the final version with the MPAA. We acted immediately to correct the mistake and removed the trailer from screens.” The trailer preceding [the R-rated]  “Scream,” meanwhile, will be a version of the original trailer instead of a new piece of material. [LATimes]

It’s always funny to me trying to predict what the MPAA will say is or isn’t over the line.  Zach Galifianakis can get blown by an old lady, but only if you use a fake penis.  Your Highness can have minotaur rape, but only if you tell them it has a cow wang (because getting raped with a cow penis is apparently more acceptable than getting raped with a man penis).  Meanwhile, how is having a monkey suck on a water-bottle penis offensive? As males, how old are we when we first decide that anything vaguely cylindrical is our wiener?  Three?  Four?  I’m pretty sure you don’t need to be 17 to understand the look-it’s-my-wiener game.  It’s one of the earliest-expressed sections of the Y chromosome, along with fart sounds and sword play*.  (*Also the title of my memoir).

The most laughable part of the documentary Overnight (which you should definitely check out if you haven’t seen) is when they imply that Harvey Weinstein might’ve been trying to have Troy Duffy killed.  But the fact that people would believe that about him shows you what kind of reputation Harvey Weinstein has.  And now he’s pissed at the MPAA, which is good news, because the MPAA are a bunch of corrupt A-holes.

In response to the ratings given to two of its upcoming films, The Weinstein Company (TWC) announced today that it has engaged a formidable legal team to challenge the NC-17 rating for BLUE VALENTINE and the R rating for THE KING’S SPEECH.

THE KING’S SPEECH drew an R rating due to its multiple occurrences of strong language, even though it is used in a non-aggressive, non-sexual, therapeutic way.

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A few weeks ago, AMC announced that it was making Hatchet II the widest release for an unrated film in 25 years.  Not that I really care much about Hatchet II, but it was a pretty cool move on AMC’s part, considering the MPAA has long been able to perform de facto censorship: if the MPAA gives your movie an NC-17 rating, most theaters won’t show it, and thus no one will see your movie.  It’s basically a corrupt system that people have known about for years (and that Hatchet II director Adam Green complained about), but hey, momentum. Fast forward to today, AMC has pulled Hatchet II from its theaters.  Official word from AMC is that it was pulled due to poor ticket sales ($52K in 68 theaters for a $774 average — compare with this week’s top 10), but of course plenty of people think it had something to do with MPAA pressure.

The decision by AMC to exhibit an unrated film attracted a lot of attention in the media—as did Green’s attacks on the MPAA, which included his assertion that it was an “evil” organization. Green now speculates this may have been the reason why the chain pulled his movie.
“I assume it probably had something to do with the controversy online about an unrated movie playing in theaters,” says the director. “To me, the whole thing is unfortunate because this is not a movie that deserves to be unrated. It’s a very funny, silly slasher movie about a swamp ghost that’s killing people in ridiculous ways. And now it’s become, you know, ‘Banned from cinemas.’” [EW]

Green and others fairly point out that there have been other films with numbers as low as Hatchet‘s that didn’t get pulled from theaters (Chain Letter, for instance), but the box office was still pretty bad.  Does that mean AMC caved to MPAA pressure?  Maybe. I’d probably file it under “not worth the hassle.”

Regardless, AMC deserves some credit for at least trying to open an unrated movie when no one else did.  The larger issue is that the MPAA is a sh*tty organization full of sh*tty people catering to sh*tty interests.  I’m sick of having my interests held hostage by the 5% of people out there dumb enough to care whether people use a word that got deemed “naughty” back when doctors used leeches and merkins were sexy.  Do I get to stop you from reading The Secret or queefing out your dumb wiener kids?  No.  Yet I have to put asterices in my swear words just in case some toothless mongoloids want to test their retard strength by boycotting something.  Awesome system we’ve got.

Joss Whedon has a huge forehead, therefore he represents Big Brother.

The long and short of this story is that the assh*les at the FCC gave the go-ahead to the assh*les at the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) to get all up in your cable box’s guts.  They’ll be able to disable the outputs to keep you from pirating movies, and this in turn would allow them to stream new movies, which will in turn bring about THE BIBLICAL ALPACA LIPS!  (*puts on tin foil hat*)

Temporarily disabling the outputs will “enable a new business model” that wouldn’t develop in the absence of such anti-piracy protection, the Federal Communications Commission said today in an order.

Home viewing of recently released movies over cable and satellite systems would provide revenue for studios such as Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures and Sony Corp.’s film division, which have seen DVD sales drop as more people get films through Internet, mail-order and kiosk rental services. The advocacy group Public Knowledge is among opponents who say the plan interferes with viewer choice.

The FCC order “‘will allow the big firms for the first time to take control of a consumer’s TV set or set-top box, blocking viewing of a TV program or motion picture,” Gigi Sohn, president of Washington-based Public Knowledge, said in a statement.

“This action is an important victory for consumers who will now have far greater access to see recent high-definition movies in their homes,” Bob Pisano, president and interim chief executive officer of the MPAA, said today in a statement. “It is a major step forward in the development of new business models by the motion picture industry to respond to growing [that is to say "imaginary"] consumer demand.” [BusinessWeek - another account from THR]

Okay, so let me break this down for you (*DJ fires up a funky beat*).

IS IT BAD?  SHOULD WE FREAK OUT?
In and of itself, I see nothing wrong with them making it harder to upload pirated movies to torrent sites.  That said…

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Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow up to Borat, has received an NC-17 rating in its first submission to the MPAA, the shadowy cabal with the power to basically torpedo your movie if they want, since most theaters won’t show an NC-17 film.  In this case, however, since Bruno comes from a major studio (Universal), it will just get re-cut a few more times until they can get an R.

Among the objectionable scenes is one in which Bruno appears to have anal sex with a man on camera. In another, the actor goes on a hunting trip and sneaks naked into the tent of one of the fellow hunters, an unsuspecting non-actor.

Cohen is currently appealing the decision while simultaneously struggling with cutting the film to suit the ratings board. But the ratings board, a secret panel of parents appointed by the studio-owned movie association, is notoriously inexact about what it requires to move from an NC-17 to an R.

Audiences saw 20 minutes of Cohen’s latest foray into high-wire comedy at the South by SouthWest festival this month.

In one scene showed at the festival, Bruno auditioned children for a subversive movie with a number of offensive acts. Clueless stage moms agreed to the increasingly absurd requirements set forth by the actor, including one woman admitting that her infant daughter could lose seven pounds in a week to fit the part.

Finally, Bruno told her about the scene, in which the child had to dress as a Nazi pushing someone into an oven. [thewrap via theplaylist]

I’m so glad that there’s a group of unemployed moms in Burbank with the power to determine what kind of movie I get to see.  Without them we’d probably all be lining up for Air Bud 7: Doggy Shoots a Snuff Film.  Admit it, you’d buy a ticket.

Subjoke: Simulated anal sex and holocaust references?  Sounds like the time I went speed dating.