EFL.I blame Ashcroft. Or Bush. Or Chaney.
The filmmakers behind 'Team America' want to get an NC-17 cut to an R, but the MPAA objects to an explicit scene.
They call it puppet love. But the folks who determine film ratings call it NC-17. The filmmakers behind "Team America: World Police," an action-genre satire featuring a team of muscular marionettes that save the world, are butting heads with the Motion Picture Assn. of America over the film's proposed rare rating, which would bar admission to anyone younger than 17. At the heart of the dispute is a scene in the film that shows simulated sex between the puppets. Thus far, the production team has submitted the scene nine times — each progressively less graphic — to the MPAA board, said Scott Rudin, the film's producer. Each time, the MPAA insisted that the NC-17 rating would remain unless further cuts were made, the filmmakers said. The MPAA did not return phone calls late Monday.
Before you know it, puppets will want to get married and stuff.
"It's something we all did as kids with Barbie and Ken dolls," said Trey Parker, the film's director and co-creator of the animated TV show "South Park." "The whole joke of it is that it's just two dolls flopping around on each other. You see the hinges on their legs. [The MPAA] read into it way more than we ever didâŠ. They said you can't do anything but missionary position." Among other things, the offending material includes shots of a male puppet simulating oral sex. The production team has already excised explicit scatological puppet sex acts in its attempt to gain an R rating, allowing entrance to teenagers under 18 when accompanied by an adult.
Scatalogical puppet sex acts. Is there a big market for that?
"There's nothing we're asking for that hasn't appeared in other R-rated movies, and our characters are made of wood and have no genitalia. If the puppets did to each other what we show them doing, all they'd get is splinters," Rudin said.
He may have a point...
"Team America" features violent scenes in which a Tim Robbins puppet is set afire and a Susan Sarandon puppet is dropped off a 20-story building — all acts that passed MPAA muster. "We blow Janeane Garofalo's head clean off, [but for the MPAA] it's all about the positions of the dolls having sex," Parker said. "It's not funny — it's tragic."
I certainly have no problems with those scenes. 
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