Can a Madonna movie survive an NC-17 rating? Or, more to the point, will NC-17 add more sizzle to its marketing allure?
”Body of Evidence,” an erotic thriller from Dino De Laurentiis Communications and MGM that stars Madonna and Willem Dafoe, has received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA Classification and Rating Administration because of explicit sexual scenes.
Where filmmakers and studio executives in the past have scrambled to appeal such a rating or frantically cut their films to get an R, ”Body”
executive producer Stephen Deutsch responded calmly. ”We`re not shocked,” he said. ”We have no quarrel with the rating. We accept it.”
What the filmmaking companies must decide over the next few weeks is whether to accept the rating or change the film. Should the producers and the studio go out with an NC-17, ”Body of Evidence” would be the first mainstream commercial feature to brave the marketing difficulties created by the restrictive rating.
”The big difference between us and other producers who faced the NC-17 dilemma is that we have the most famous woman in the world,” Deutsch said.
”What we want to research over the next several weeks is what that means to this film to go out with an NC.”
Madonna stars as a woman standing trial on charges of murdering her lover, and Dafoe is her defense attorney who compromises everything when he becomes caught up in her seduction. The film, directed by Uli Edel (”Last Exit to Brooklyn”) and written by Brad Mirman, also stars Joe Mantegna and Anne Archer.
NC-17 was instituted in September 1990 when the MPAA overhauled its rating system. The MPAA removed the old X designation and replaced it with NC- 17: no children under 17 admitted.
The only major studio film to go out with that designation was Universal`s ”Henry & June” in 1990. At the time only a few newspapers and TV stations refused to accept ads. And few theater chains canceled bookings of the film.
Since that first venture, studios have clearly been reluctant to market their films with such a designation. The most recent examples are MGM`s ”The Lover” and TriStar`s ”Basic Instinct,” which were cut to escape their NC-17 designations and earn an R.
”It has been in the back of all our heads throughout the production that we would at some point have to consider releasing the film as NC-17,” Deutsch said.
”They will probably back off, because I don`t think it will help the picture to put an NC on it,” noted one exhibition source. ”Why would `Basic Instinct` and `The Lover` make cuts if they thought it didn`t need an R? But they might go ahead with the rating because of Madonna`s reputation.”
”Body of Evidence” is set for wide domestic release Jan. 22.
