TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012792/0127420.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.9 KB | 130 lines

                                                                                CINEMA, Page 64

What Ever Became of NC-17?


It was supposed to take the stigma off the X, but the dispute
over a Michael Douglas movie shows how it failed

By RICHARD CORLISS -- Reported by Jordan Bonfante and Sally B.
Donnelly/Los Angeles


    Four movie scenes coming soon -- or maybe not -- to a
theater near you:

    1. A man and a woman are making love in heated close-up.
Suddenly she stabs him with an ice pick. "She is first having
sex with him, then killing him," says one person who has seen
the film. "And she doesn't do either gently."

    2. A woman being interrogated by police about a murder
uncrosses her legs and reveals she is wearing no panties.

    3. A climactic attack is drenched in violence.

    4. This is it, folks: "five minutes of pure, erotic sex
and lovemaking."

    These scenes are from Basic Instinct, a cop-and-copulation
thriller starring Michael Douglas as a San Francisco detective
on the trail of a serial killer and Sharon Stone as a bisexual
novelist, a suspect in the case, with whom he has a convulsive
affair.

    The film has courted scandal since it was a script, which
earned a record $3 million for writer Joe Eszterhas. Before
shooting began, the original producer, Irwin Winkler, quit,
complaining that director Paul Verhoeven was obsessed with
showing body parts "in various stages of excitement." Eszterhas
also stormed off the project once or twice. Last spring the
production was picketed in San Francisco by gay activists
objecting to the script's depiction of killer lesbians. Everyone
else was gossiping about the sex scenes. "Michael Douglas and
I went as far as anyone could go," Stone told Movie line
magazine. "So far, in fact, that I don't know how they'll ever
get a rating."

    They can get a rating. But their problem is getting an R,
which allows children to see a film in the company of an adult.
After two preliminary screenings, the Motion Picture Association
of America's classification board indicated that in its present
form, Basic Instinct would receive an NC-17 rating (no
children; 17 or older). Douglas and Verhoeven have urged that
the disputed scenes stay, even if this results in an adults-only
tag. But Carolco, which produced the $40 million film, and
Tri-Star, which is to release it in March, are insisting that
Verhoeven keep cutting Basic Instinct until it gets an R.
Fearful that they will make less money if shut out of the
lucrative teen market, they are opting for holy Mammon over hot
art.

    If anybody in Hollywood could bring muscle to breaking the
taboo against releasing NC-17 movies, Douglas and Verhoeven are
the guys. The Dutch director (who in his early films Spetters
and The Fourth Man peppered extravagant sexual themes with
lavish male and female nudity) is known for his inventive,
violent and profitable sci-fi films RoboCop and Total Recall.
Douglas is one of the town's most respected and powerful
actor-producers; his risks pay off. Should Tri-Star take a
gamble on his instincts? Director Lili Fini Zanuck (Rush) thinks
so: "You've got Michael Douglas, a major star who has proved
himself in a similar film, Fatal Attraction. If the studio will
back Basic Instinct, so will the marketplace."

    Two years ago, directors and reviewers raised a ruckus
about the X ratings given such critically acclaimed independent
fare as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and The Cook the
Thief His Wife & Her Lover. After much debate, and the
likelihood that a major-studio film (Universal's Henry & June)
would get an X, the film industry's rating board altered the
label to NC-17. The idea was to remove the stigma of pornography
that the X rating bore and allow serious filmmakers to explore
provocative styles without worrying that the parents of a
14-year-old might be offended.

    It didn't take. Many theaters, bound by restrictive real
estate contracts, will not show NC-17 movies, and many
newspapers won't run the ads. The majors continue to require
directors to deliver films that will be rated no worse than R.
So the rating really meant "No Change"; not a single big-studio
film since Henry & June has been released NC-17. And for
directors wanting the same freedom as their European
counterparts, it means "No Chance."

    Richard Heffner, the chairman of the ratings board, says
NC-17 should not be treated as "the mark of Cain. I firmly
believe that NC-17 is a rating that should be used and
respected," he says. "Americans are wise enough to understand
that we should discriminate between what children and adults can
see, and that's all it means."

    Heffner may see the NC-17 rating as a guide for concerned
parents, but producers, distributors and exhibitors take it as
a guide to what they can make, release and show. "NC-17 movies
do not fit into our main business plan," says Thomas Pollock,
chairman of the MCA/Universal Motion Picture Group. "By and
large, we are designing movies as entertainment for large
audiences. That is our mandate. I doubt that NC-17 will be
viable unless some mainstream movie is willing to go out with
the label. Otherwise the category has no real meaning, because
no one's using it."

    The sensible compromise -- to release Basic Instinct in
both its original (NC-17) and moderated (R) versions -- is not
allowed by the motion-picture association. The probable outcome
is that like other films embroiled in ratings wrangles, Basic
Instinct will be shown fig-leafed in the U.S. but fully frontal
abroad and, later, on home video. In that scenario, the
bluenoses and bean counters win; consenting adults and ambitious
moviemakers lose. And once again a crucial question goes
begging: if movies are allowed to make violence terrifying --
as in such acclaimed dramas as The Silence of the Lambs, Cape
Fear and JFK -- why can't they make sex sexy?