Whatever happened to the X-rated film?

New York Times News Service via Houston Chronicle ^ | Aug. 8, 2003, 6:15AM | By ELVIS MITCHELL

[weegee]

His account of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange was wrong. The movie was originally rated X but Mr. Kubrick cut the film to get an R rating. Mr. Kubrick had even voluntarily withheld the film from screening in England after it's initial release (I believe in response to an assault).

Is there a fear of dealing with grown-up sexuality in movies?

The sex scene in A Clockwork Orange that got it an X was a rape scene. Is this "grown-up sexuality"? Oh brother.

which created a laughable concept in sleazy promotion for pornographic movies: a proliferation of X's stamped across the poster. The unspoken thought was that these movies were so hot that one X was not enough for their lust, sex and bad acting.

Actually it was a spoken thought. The whole notion of XXX was an ad campaign gimmick from David Friedman (a film explotiation man who had been in Hollywood since WWII). He put the banner on a poster "Too much sex for just one X".

This article overlooked Roger Ebert's own X rated soap opera sex tale of Hollywood "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls". Showgirls was nothing but a remake of this "star is born" story. And it received an NC-17 when it was resubmitted for a rating by 20th Century Fox. Roger's other movies were rated X too (self-imposed by director/co-writer Russ Meyer, although Up! and Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra-Vixens would never have received an R).

[weegee]

"The Passion" May get NC-17 Rating?? (Buzz from Hollywood)

[Bluntpoint]

Show me an x-rated film longer than 5 minutes long and I will show you a film that nobody on this earth can tell you how it ended.

[JZoback]

Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy of 1969 became the only X-rated film to win an Academy Award for best picture

Midnight Cowboy would barely pull an "R" rating with today's standard

[Paul Atreides]

Have they taken a look at horror movies? Hellraiser was rated R and it was back in the 80s. It had some very gruesome scenes in it. Braveheart didn't even get an X rating. Hollywood is just trying to kill The Passion.

[supercat]

One thing the article doesn't mention, but which I find amusing, is the role of the 'f' word in film ratings. A film in which the 'f' word is used once will get at least a PG-13 even if there is no other objectionable content; a film in which it is used two or more times will receive at least an R.

I have sometimes seen films which had nothing objectionable except for an F-bomb or two, but whose advertising suggested that they contained steamy material (even though they didn't). I have a sneaking suspicion the language may have been written in purely to get the tougher rating so that people would see the movie expecting steamy material that wasn't there.

[weegee]

Whn I went to college in Boston, I think that channel 38 aired both Midnight Cowboy and Last Tango In Paris with commercials but no edits.

[jlogajan]

Although there are no more X or NC-17 films released by major studios, there are more porn flicks available than ever. These are by cable, satellite, DVD and VHS.

[weegee]

I've heard that some studios in the past 2 decades have added profanity to avoid a G or PG rating.

G doesn't mean "just for kids" it means acceptable for general audiences (like tv broadcasts used to be).

Planet Of The Apes had nudity, violence, and damns and hells and still got a G. The Monkees movie Head had drug references and the news footage of the man being executed on the street and it got a G rating.

The ratings from one year to the next are not consistant.

[RLK]

What idiot wrote this? The reason there are few X rated films is because the rating system has been downgraded. Infidility, for which Diane Lane was nominated for an academy award has her sitting in a chair mastrubating. Seduction is clinically esxcellent but has a man and woman having apparent rectal intercourse in a night club john.

[=Intervention=]

The article writer is a fool and an idiot. X-rated films are not produced because THE PUBLIC HAS NO INTEREST IN BUYING THEM. Films are a product; the audience consumes. If they don't like what is produced, they don't BUY IT. I suppose the unwashed crowd just isn't sophisticated enough for Hollywood's pornotopias and bizaree afflictions. Grow up...

[jlogajan]

The article writer is a fool and an idiot. X-rated films are not produced because THE PUBLIC HAS NO INTEREST IN BUYING THEM.

Heh heh, yeah right. The porn film industry is a billion dollar industry.

[jlogajan]

Infidility, for which Diane Lane was nominated for an academy award

Unfaithful.

[ladyinred]

Midnight Cowboy would not be rated x these days, it would be considered family fare. It might as well have been then, as when I saw it at the theater, I didn't have any idea of the gay male hooker aspect. It wasn't until years later, after I grew up and saw it on TV that I realized what was going on. Naive!

[dogbyte12]

From what I remember, Steven Spielberg didn't want a G rating for E.T., so he added in a silly swear word, just so the movie would get a PG rating.

I would actually love to see a well done "adult" movie. The problem is, that nobody would see it, because many papers, radio stations, tv stations wouldn't air ads for it, even if the ads themselves are tame.

I am not talking about "porn" here. I am talking about a major budget picture, that is kinda a date movie. Something like Ghost, or Sleepless in Seattle, but with explicit sex, but just barely, and tastefully done. Maybe 3 minutes out of a 120 minute movie. This would be something couples could choose to watch on the DVD in the bedroom, on a Friday night, or choose not to watch.

How many husbands would get lucky that night if they rented a Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anaston romantic thriller, where they weren't really acting in the bedroom scene in the movie?

We do have weird values here where you can simulate chests being ripped out, arms being blown off, with blood dripping off the gaping wound, but we have to be shielded from sexual explicitness. No, this shouldn't be for kids, but adults should make their own decisions.

Hollywood is crap though lately no matter what they produce typically. Some of the kids movies are still decent though. The last movie my wife and I went together to see was Finding Nemo. Enjoyed it, but it is depressing that nothing else has really drawn us into the theaters.

[Jonathon Spectre]

X-rated films are not produced because THE PUBLIC HAS NO INTEREST IN BUYING THEM.

You are living in a dream world, dude.

[FreedomCalls]

Mr. Kubrick had even voluntarily withheld the film [A Clockwork Orange] from screening in England

It's still embargoed there. It cannot be legally rented, bought, or publicly shown in Britain even today.

[mikeb704]

I don't think you were naive, just raised by people who cared enough to shelter you from the sleazier aspects of this increasingly crazy world.

[Rodney King]

Well, the author is pretty much an idiot, as you well point out. I wil say however, that while I do not share the liberals dream of a "free love" attitude to movie ratings, I do think that the gruesome violence is more damaging to kids then naked people are.

That is, there are a lot of people out there who freak out if there is a sex scene in a movie, yet don't care if people are chopping each other's heads off. Horrible, explicit violence is all over TV and in the movies, yet nobody cares.
I don't want my daughter seeing either sex or violence, but If forced I would choose naked women over grusemome death and torture any day. The ratings agency and the public at large seem to disagree with me.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Originally when the movie association was set up, the ratings were, G, M, R, and X. For some reason, the association forgot to copyright X and the porno industry seized it. Not wanted to be affliated with the 'low' movies, the movie association created NC-17 instead.