Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet
It's been a rough few weeks," says director Atom Egoyan.
The Canadian maverick had received an estimated $25 million to make his "most commercial" film, with a "name" cast that includes Kevin Bacon, Allison Lohman and Colin Firth.It was in the can, ready to hit a few film festivals and then head into North America's movie theaters this fall.
Then he ran into a little thing called the MPAA -- the studio-run Motion Picture Association of America, whose ratings board decides what to label movies: G, PG, PG-13, R -- or the dreaded adults-only NC-17.
Egoyan, director of The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica, earned commercial cinema's equivalent of the death penalty. As reported in Variety, the MPAA identified four scenes in the sexually explicit murder mystery, including a menage a trois that Egoyan could not cut to its satisfaction. His studio appealed, but no dice.
ThinkFilm decided to release Where the Truth Lies without a rating. To no avail, as it turns out.
Truth won't be coming to a theater near you.
The studio gave up on rolling it into new cities, including Orlando, as of Friday.
"I was happy, at least, to see the film in its uncut state," Egoyan says. "The last time I saw it was at the MPAA's screening room in Los Angeles in our 'final cut' version, and I was really unhappy.
"It was a very confusing moment for me, because one side of me really wanted to get the R, and the other side didn't want the movie to go out that way. I guess I'm just relieved that the film won't be tampered with."
Movies with NC-17 have a hard time advertising on mainstream outlets. The rating also restricts the audience, ruling out those 17 and younger. Releasing a film unrated skirts that stigma, though studios prefer to have films rated, widely advertised and able to reach the largest audience.
Truth is based on a lurid serio-comic novel by Rupert Holmes, the singer-songwriter of "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)." The film is about a reporter (Lohman) who investigates a long-covered-up scandal, a murder mystery overshadowing the breakup of a beloved comic team (Firth and Bacon). Her research uncovers the kinky sexual overtones of the mystery and how they relate to the long-estranged comics.
The MPAA doesn't make public statements about its edicts, but filmmakers are certain that the movie's suggestions of gay sex earned it that NC-17 stamp.
"I think they offered the information early on that this is 'not, repeat not, about the homosexuality,' " says Bacon. "And that's a pretty good indication to me that it is about the homosexuality."
Firth seconds that.
"We're being penalized for the nature of the sexuality," Firth says. "I've seen many movies with more nudity. The sex here is not pornographic or titillating. It's this business of them telling us, 'Well, there's one thrust too many' that is so maddening about this. It's hypocrisy at its worst."
Egoyan says that the very fact that his film has a name cast "and all this Hollywood studio machinery behind it is what is transgressive about it. If this had been an indie film with lesser-known actors, there wouldn't have been any fuss whatsoever."
In any event, it's the uncut Truth that took its shot in theaters, and failed. But look for it on DVD.
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