Making Pornography PG-13

Tony Comstock, the filmmaker whose ouvre includes erotic films of committed couples, is a historian of porn and its place in American culture. His latest project, now soliciting crowdfunding, is to submit his most recent film to the MPAA and see what comes back:

On the basis of the MPAA's feedback, we will produce a multi-angle DVD showing the exact difference between the Unrated, NC-17, R and PG-13 rated version of the film... Videos of each rating version of the film will also be uploaded to popular video sharing sites, such as YouTube, Vimeo, Daily Motion, etc to see how various MPAA-rated versions are treated by the vagaries of Community Guidelines is TOS agreements.

We're undertaking this project because kerfuffles over ratings generate a lot of anger and publicity, but they don't seem to leave anyone any better informed about the rating process, and we'd like to change that. By taking BRETT AND MELANIE through the MPAA process, we'll be able show just what sort of alterations were required to achieve various ratings. And once we have those ratings in hand, we can test the MPAA's content rating system and level of transparency against places like YouTube and Facebook.

With any luck we'll get another memo like this one which still wins the Dish's prize for Best. Memo. Ever:

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A word to the wise: Broadway doesn't have these stupid rules. The Book Of Mormon is selling tickets here.

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