Patrick Goldstein does this whole piece about a documentary called Naked Ambition having its trailer red-banded by CARA and takes the MPAA to task for this.
But he links to this trailer aka "Last Looks" with Audio Mix - 01/30/09... which has a CARA green band and an R-rating on the front of it, though I guess that those are not official... especially since they are on every version of the rejected trailers.
Ah... the other versions.
The filmmakers, in offering Patrick a look at the last version they submitted, also gave anyone with a geek brain access to the first four versions. Here is the first look aka Rough Cut 12/16/08. Plenty of overt sexuality including a girl licking her own breasts, the f-word (albeit partially bleeped), a glimpse of nudity, a real-doll being felt up, and a closing tag in which an actress proclaims that "I get so much ***... it's amazing". So, it seems, that's were the relationship with CARA started.
I found it kind of interesting to watch each successive version in order to see what changed. The *** licking, language, and glimpse of nudity disappear... though I would hardly say, "not even anything especially suggestive."
Here are the other cuts...
2nd Pass Rough Cut for Approval - 12/17/08
3rd Pass Rough Cut for Approval - 01/19/08
4th Pass Rough Cut for Approval - 01/21/08
Of course, I always love when web-hating Patrick lets people get away with quotes like, "I could tell from our phone conversations that I was dealing with a generation of people that really didn't understand today's MySpace culture at all," unchallenged because it fits his agenda. If what he means is, "Kids see this stuff online so the adults should stop trying to get in the way," he kinda loses me. And normally, I would expect that to be true of Patrick as well.
And one big issue - the fact that MPAA owns a copyright on the term R rating - is glanced over. As the director offers, inaccurately, "'R' isn't their emblem or anything." But it is. Legally.
Anyway... an interesting glimpse into a process in spite of the poor journalism. I mostly think that this guy, with enough ego to try to qualify for Oscar - he seems to be 4-walling the film to qualify before it goes to TV after midnight, as many HBO docs do - got some free publicity out of this spectacular non-issue.
And dare I expose my knowledge base by point out that while Jenna Jameson - who is featured in the HBO doc, Thinking XXX - appears here only on the red carpet on on stage for the AVN Awards themselves, Ron Jeremy and Tera Patrick do not appear in this trailer at all and if they are in the film, it is not apparent from this 2 minutes. Is it possible that Mr. Grecco is overselling this detail as well?
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/04/porn_leaves_a_t.html