From Midnight Cowboy to Blonde: A brief history of Hollywood's most memorable NC-17 battles

Some filmmakers fought back (Kevin Smith) while others made cuts (Oliver Stone, Mel Gibson) when facing the MPAA's dreaded NC-17 and X designations

By Drew Gillis, Ian Spelling, Jen Lennon, Hattie Lindert, Jack Smart  |  September 30, 2022 | 12:00pm
Film Features Midnight Cowboy
From Midnight Cowboy to Blonde: A brief history of Hollywood's most memorable NC-17 battles
Screenshot: MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros, Netflix

The Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, which started streaming on Netflix this week after causing a sensation at the Venice Film Festival, is the first film in several years to receive an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. While Ana de Armas earned glowing notices for her work in Blonde (the movie’s reviews, meanwhile, are less kind), the film’s NC-17 designation for “some sexual content” came as a surprise, and it remains to be seen how that rating will affect its performance with Netflix viewers.

But because Blonde skipped theaters—it’s the first major studio release to go straight to streaming while carrying the MPAA’s most stringent rating—it managed to avoid the fate of many other films, which have been kneecapped by an NC-17 that scares off moviegoers and theater owners.

The MPAA’s decisions to hand down NC-17 ratings (and to assign X ratings to some mainstream films in the years before NC-17 was created) are often accompanied by controversy. Most recently, de Armas spoke out forcefully after the Blonde judgment. Here, then, are 20 of the most notable (notorious?) films to run afoul of Hollywood’s ratings gatekeepers over the years, along with a look at how some filmmakers were forced to alter their projects to ensure a wider release, and other titles that simply refused, or chose not to, change things up.

Midnight Cowboy (1968)
Midnight Cowboy (1969) | Official Trailer | MGM Studios

Nearly 54 years after its release, remains a great film. It’s vital, seedy and heartbreaking, with remarkable performances by then-newcomer Jon Voight and then-relative newcomer Dustin Hoffman. Voight plays Joe, a Texas cowboy who arrives in New York intent on becoming a gigolo for the city’s lovely ladies. He befriends Ratso (Hoffman), an increasingly ill hustler. Together, they chase the American Dream, but it all goes to hell, with Joe eventually turning tricks for men.John Schlesinger made Midnight Cowboy when studios took real risks. It’s got straight and gay sex, cursing galore, a surreal party sequence, suggestions of rape, some nudity, and a nasty sequence in which Joe beats a male gay client. Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film ever to win a Best Picture Oscar. However, all of it is a bit overblown. We glimpse female breasts and the butts of guys and gals, but there’s precious little sex depicted on screen. Nearly every implied homosexual moment is exactly that: implied, and a moment. Violent as the beating sequence is, it didn’t prompt the X rating. Rather, everything taken together, particularly the elements of prostitution and homosexuality, resulted in the MPAA’s dreaded X. “Midnight Cowboy, the sometimes amusing but essentially sordid saga of a male prostitute in Manhattan,” wrote, “should do business on shock, sensation, sex, curiosity, dispute and the popularity of Dustin Hoffman appearing in his first film since The Graduate.”And a most important footnote: The MPAA later changed Midnight Cowboy’s rating to a far more appropriate R. [Ian Spelling]

A Clockwork Orange (1971)
A Clockwork Orange | Trailer | Warner Bros. Entertainment

The inciting incident in Stanley Kubrick’s is an act of ultraviolence. It’s a slang term for the particular kind of violence Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his three “droogs”—his friends Georgie (James Marcus), Pete (Michael Tarn), and Dim (Warren Clarke)—perpetrate, but it’s also an apt description of the language of the film as a whole. Kubrick’s camerawork is unflinching in its documentation of Alex’s brutal crimes, and it’s this refusal to look away that landed A Clockwork Orange an X rating in 1971. Six months after its release, Kubrick agreed to remove 30 seconds of sexual material from the film and replace it with less explicit footage. After a new review by the MPAA, A Clockwork Orange was re-released in theaters with an R rating. Still, in 1973, Kubrick pulled the film from British theaters after it was accused of inspiring copycat crimes. The film remained until 2000. [Jen Lennon]

Pink Flamingos (1972) / Female Trouble (1974)
Pink Flamingos Trailer

is, famously, John Waters’ “exercise in poor taste.” It notably contains a non-sequitur ending of the iconic drag queen Divine eating dog poop straight from the hound’s anus, and that is one of the tamer scenes in the movie. Likewise, his 1974 effort (and arguably his best film) follows a criminal (Divine, again) who wants nothing more than to be famous. Waters’ movies always have followed those on the outskirts of society, be they queer or criminal. “We were all influenced by radical politics and rioting, so we were driven, but we were also looking for trouble,” the director told in June. The underground cult hits were finally both rated NC-17 by the MPAA when they were rereleased in the ’90s, with Flamingos for “extreme perversities shown in an explicit way.” Even so, Waters has never cared much: “[C]ensors have never given me too much hassle because they know I only make fun of things I love. The right people still win in my movie, no matter how debauched either side is.” [Drew Gillis]

Last Tango In Paris (1972)
Last Tango in Paris (3/10) Movie CLIP - No Names (1972) HD

Like a couple of other entries on this list, the rating for may be the least controversial element of the film. It followed a fairly straightforward path; the extremely sexual film was rated X upon its initial release in 1972, was cut to an R for a 1981 release, and was released in full in 1997 with the then-existent NC-17 rating.More notable and far more disturbing than the rating, however, were the effects the film had on its stars, Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. In 2016, reported that director Bernardo Bertolucci admitted that he was not honest with Schneider about the film’s infamous rape scene, wanting to capture her authentic surprise and horror. “I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci,” the actress said. “After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take.” Even Brando later admitted he felt taken advantage of on the set, too; in 2011, Bertolucci told : “He was very upset with me, and I told him, ‘Listen, you are a grown-up. Older than me. Didn’t you realize what you were doing?’ And he didn’t talk to me for years.” While Last Tango In Paris undoubtedly stands out as an early entry into post-Code Hollywood, it also serves as a disturbing reminder of how unprotected those on Hollywood sets were at the time—a reality that continued, horrifically, for decades after. [Drew Gillis]

Turning points: Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989/1990)
Antonio Banderas & Victoria Abril in Almodóvar’s TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! I NEW HD Trailer I 7/7/21

In 1990, when three critically acclaimed films were kneecapped by the rating system upon their release, it became clear that something had to be done. was initially released in 1986, but was “trapped in the movie rating system for three years,” wrote in a contemporary review, noting that some had felt it captured “evil incarnate.” “The MPAA denied it an R rating (and said, indeed, that no possible cuts could qualify it for an R movie), so now it has been released with no rating at all.” Ebert pushed for an “A”—for adult—rating.After premiered at TIFF in 1989, Ebert once again argued for the A rating. In an , the critic absolutely flamed the MPAA, writing: We live in a country where there is no appropriate category for a serious film for adults. On the one hand, there’s the R rating (which means a film can be seen by anyone in possession of a parent or adult guardian) and on the other there’s the X, which has been discredited by its ironclad association with hard-core porno. Why not an A rating, for adults only? That would be the appropriate rating for a movie like this. But then, God forbid, the theaters might actually have to turn potential customers away! And so the MPAA enters its third decade of hypocrisy, and serious filmmakers like Greenaway, filmmakers with something urgent to say and an extreme way of saying it, suffer the MPAA’s tacit censorship.Finally, 1990 saw the release of Pedro Almodóvar’s , which ultimately became the subject of a lawsuit between Miramax and the MPAA after the film received an X rating. Miramax’s case was ultimately dismissed, but Judge Charles E. Ramos also used the opportunity to take the MPAA to task, , “The MPAA requires that American films deal with adult subjects in non-adult terms, or face an X rating.” Within months, the NC-17 rating would be created, supposedly allowing adult subjects to be dealt with in “adult terms.” [Drew Gillis]

Henry & June (1990)
Henry And June Trailer 1990

has the honor of earning the first-ever NC-17 rating, cementing its place in film history. Following vocal and persistent criticism, the MPAA presented the new rating as an exciting step forward. “We are going back to the original intent of the rating system,” MPAA President Jack Valenti told the in 1990. “We have an adults-only category and anybody who wants to go see (an NC-17-rated) film can go see it, period. It takes us back to the days, hopefully, of Midnight Cowboy, Last Tango in Paris, and A Clockwork Orange.” Whether any of the subsequent NC-17-rated films reached that esteemed place is up for debate—most of the films slapped with the rating fought to remove it—but it’s hard to imagine anyone placing Henry & June next to a Kubrick film. [Drew Gillis]

Clerks (1994)
Clerks Official Trailer #1 - (1994) HD

Leave it to Kevin Smith to get in trouble just for talking. The famously verbose director’s first film, 1994’s , was handed an NC-17 rating by the MPAA because of explicit dialogue between Quick Stop employee Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and his friend Randal (Jeff Anderson), who works at the video rental shop next door. There’s no violence or nudity depicted on screen; it’s literally just two dudes talking about sex. But Jack Valenti, then-chairman of the MPAA,, saying, “There are millions of Americans who become hysterical about the kind of bad language that may be de rigueur around dinner tables in the East Side of Manhattan. But in the cities and villages and towns across this free and loving land, it’s not that way at all.” Miramax, which was distributing Clerks, disagreed and appealed the decision. Smith and Miramax walked away victorious, and Clerks was given an R rating without having to change anything. Somehow, this is not the only time Smith has pulled off that exact move: and from NC-17 to R ratings as well. [Jen Lennon]

Natural Born Killers (1994)
Natural Born Killers (1994) Official Trailer - Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr Movie HD

While a lot of the movies on this list now feel tame for audiences who’ve grown accustomed to gratuitous sex and violence, is not one of them. Nearly 30 years after its release, the Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis-led picture still feels fairly shocking, and we’re (usually) seeing the edited version. With a 1996 director’s cut, Oliver Stone restored about three minutes of footage he was forced to cut to avoid an NC-17 rating. “I had to deliver an R,” Stone told in 1996. Even with the edits, the film (allegedly) inspired enough copycat crimes to earn their own , and Natural Born Killers was once banned in Ireland. “The most pacifistic people in the world said they came out of this movie and wanted to kill somebody,” Stone admitted. [Drew Gillis]

Braveheart (1995)
Braveheart: Freedom Speech

The thing that ran into trouble with was, ironically, probably the most accurate, non-offensive element of the movie. No, it wasn’t the egregious historical inaccuracies, the gay bashing, or even the Mel Gibson-ness of it all that the MPAA took issue with, but rather it was the medieval violence. The battle scenes and the climatic torture scene of William Wallace were trimmed (along with about an hour of footage, , to get the film under three hours) to move the rating from an NC-17 to an R. The change likely enabled a wide release, which enabled Braveheart to take home five Oscars, including Best Picture. [Drew Gillis]

Showgirls (1995)
Showgirls (1995) - Thrust It! Scene (6/12) | Movieclips

Director Paul Verhoeven was no stranger to battles with the MPAA when was released in 1995; his previous film, Basic Instinct was originally rated NC-17 before it was re-edited—Sharon Stone flashing scene intact—to earn an R rating, while Robocop was before it finally secured an R. However, as reported at the time of its release, Showgirls “welcomed” the rating that was once seen as “commercial death.” MGM/United Artists chairman Frank Mancuso boasted to the Times, “It’s a film for mature audiences. And frankly, I hope the stigma attached to the NC-17 rating can be removed.” With a budget of $40-$45 million and an opening in 700-1,000 theaters, it was by far the biggest opening for an NC-17 movie ever. But was it any good? Depends on who you ask; as Jeffrey McHale argues in the documentary You Don’t Nomi, the film is neither a masterpiece nor a piece of shit, but a “masterpiece of shit.” Not exactly the kind of movie that ended the stigma against the rating. [Drew Gillis]

Crash (1996)
Crash | David Cronenberg

It’s hardly surprising that —David Cronenberg’s dream-like interrogation of a group of people who get sexually aroused watching car crashes—earned the NC-17 rating. At the time, it was controversial in the truest sense of the word: there was vigorous disagreement about the merits of the movie. Francis Ford Coppola, president of the Cannes Film Festival at the time, didn’t want the film to even be screened at the festival, according to Cronenberg. The film was ultimately met with boos (a far cry from the that feels practically perfunctory today) but won a Special Jury Prize at the festival. “I think it was the jury’s attempt to get around the Coppola negativity, because they had the power to create their own award without the president’s approval,” the director told The Canadian Press (via ) in 2020. “[D]uring the final closing night ceremony he wouldn’t hand me the award. He had someone else hand it to me … I don’t think he was very gracious.” [Drew Gillis]

American Pie (1999)
American Pie | Jim’s Infamous Pie Scene

Even the raunchy, ridiculous teens that populate Paul Weitz’s 1999 romp  weren’t immune to an NC-17 rating. At its gooey heart, the film was an oversexualized buddy comedy aimed at capturing those hazy last days of high school. In order to hold tight to a teenage target audience, American Pie was edited to achieve an R rating. Per , that process took three resubmissions (an of the film eventually made it to DVD). The purported barrier between American Pie and an R rating? That apple pie. Four thrusts of Jim’s penis into the pie proved too many, but the MPAA agreed to two thrusts. Compromise, functioning as it should! [Hattie Lindert]

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Eyes Wide Shut (18+) Official Trailer (1999) | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Warner Bros. faced quite the conundrum in 1999. The legendary Stanley Kubrick had wrapped and even shown the studio and his stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, a “final” cut when he died unexpectedly on March 7, 1999, months before the erotic drama’s July release. Mostly due to an extended orgy sequence with copious amounts of naked bodies, the MPAA slapped Eyes Wide Shut with an NC-17 rating, which the studio felt would blunt the film’s box office prospects. Kubrick wasn’t around to make edits or suggest ways around the issue. And, remember, he was notorious for editing up to and even after a film’s release. So, there’s every possibility that Kubrick might have trimmed the movie’s 159-minute running time and/or tinkered with the scene in question. However, the studio ultimately left the scene intact but digitally obscured various offending body parts in order to secure the more lucrative R rating. It was pretty laughable, as the scene plays more surreal than sexual anyway—and it does so even in the unrated DVD edition Warner Bros. later released. It’s yet another testament to the missed opportunity of the NC-17 rating, which could have heralded adult fare rather than signaling that moviegoers were about to watch something ultra-pornographic or super-violent. [Ian Spelling]

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999)
Blame Canada - South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (3/9) Movie CLIP (1999) HD

In the history of MPAA warfare, the feature-length installment of is notable not just for its offscreen fight to change its NC-17 rating to R; it’s also the only film on this list to incorporate movie ratings into the onscreen story as well. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Ike, and Kenny seeing a profanity-filled R-rated flick is what leads to the delightful debauchery of Bigger, Longer & Uncut, including an all-out war between Canada and the U.S. and imminent world domination by Satan and Saddam Hussein. Nothing is off limits for series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, whose skewering of the MPAA’s arbitrary gatekeeping is actually pretty low on their list of things to satirize in this movie. Nevertheless, the filmmakers had to “respect the authoritah” of the actual association, which until to spell out specific red flags. In the end, the South Park film came out on top, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated animated film ever until Sausage Party, earning an Academy Award nomination for “Blame Canada,” one of Parker and Marc Shaiman’s catchy original songs. The juiciest bit of trivia in all this? . The MPAA allegedly seemed ready to reject the original working title, South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose, because of its blasphemous inclusion of “hell.” So imagine Parker and Stone’s surprise when the org made no objections to Bigger, Longer & Uncut, an obvious reference (to anyone but the MPAA, apparently) to an uncircumcised penis. [Jack Smart]

Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Y Tu Mama Tambien Official Trailer #1 - Gael GarcÍa Bernal Movie (2001) HD

If you need proof that ratings mean nothing in the film world, look no further than Alfonso Cuarón’s . The 2001 Mexican road-trip movie received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA for its depiction of sex and drug use. and edit the movie down to an R rating, but too much of its humor was also lost, and the company decided it wasn’t worth it. Instead, IFC released Y Tu Mamá También without an official MPAA rating.Releasing a movie unrated is a clever workaround for films that would otherwise be rated NC-17; many theater chains won’t show an NC-17 movie, but have no problem showing unrated films. And the lack of rating didn’t stop Y Tu Mamá También from becoming a massive success: it earned over $33 million worldwide on a $5 million budget and Cuarón and his brother were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Making such a sexy film didn’t seem to stigmatize Cuarón in film circles, either; the next movie he directed was the decidedly family-friendly Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban. [Jen Lennon]

Saw 3D (2010)
Saw 3D - New Movie Trailer

The seventh film in the Saw franchise (and the franchise’s first foray into 3D) also had to reckon with the MPAA; it took six tries to reach an R rating from an initial NC-17 cut. Rhyme and reason do play a part here: one of the film’s most diabolical traps, the Rube Goldberg-gone-Joker “Horsepower Trap,” was for previous films but consistently deemed too brutal. Despite all that caution, the film was still accidentally screened instead of the G-rated Megamind at one theater, scarring young children anyway. Much like a Jigsaw trap itself, there was no maneuvering around this film’s gory nature. [Hattie Lindert]

Blue Is The Warmest Color (2013)
Blue Is The Warmest Color - Official Trailer

is a rare example of an NC-17 rating that was actually supported by the critically acclaimed drama’s distribution team. Jonathan Sehring, the president of Sundance Selects/IFC Films at the time, said they didn’t do any R-friendly “” in order to preserve director Abdellatif Kechiche’s vision. The Palm D’Or winner was even shown at New York’s IFC Center.However, an NC-17 rating is a small fish in the school of controversies that tail Blue Is The Warmest Color. Stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux have repeatedly discussed what they describe as an exploitative experience on Kechiche’s set, specifically during sex scenes. “Most people don’t even dare to ask the things that he did, and they’re more respectful,” Exarchopoulos told The Daily Beast in a 2013 ; Seydoux called filming “horrible.” Kechiche and Seydoux’s relationship, specifically, became so contentious in the aftermath of the film’s release that he has said he wished he (rating aside). [Hattie Lindert]

Sausage Party (2016)
SAUSAGE PARTY - Official Restricted Trailer - In Cinemas August 11

is decadently filthy fun, with writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg going balls to the wall with their CG-animated comedy about drug-consuming and fornicating food. The language, the imagery, and what you see with your own eyes, it’s beyond the pale—and hysterically funny. You think, “They won’t go there. They can’t show that.” And, yup, they go there and show that. Rogen and Goldberg (and directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon) went so far—particularly with an orgy scene—that the MPAA gave the film an NC-17 rating. Rogen fretted that the MPAA would demand cuts that “butchered” the film, . But most of the cuts—and we’re talking 18 frames!—involved trimming pubic hair from the testicles of the pita bread character, Lavash (David Krumholtz). “When I look at the movie,” Rogen said, “I am more shocked at what we were able to get away with rather than what we had to take out.” So, what happened? “I’m convinced,” Rogen said, “that [the MPAA panel] all got together and one guy said: ‘This is not for children. But it’s food, and it’s animated. It’s not people, it’s a cartoon. Let’s let it happen!’” And it happened, as the film went on to gross just shy of $100 million in U.S. and more than $40 million elsewhere around the world. [Ian Spelling]

 
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