WWW- Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard have a wild ménà ge à trois in their new film, “Where the Truth Lies.” But how much of their three-way will you get to see?
Director Atom Egoyan and ThinkFilm execs are wrestling with the MPAA ratings board over whether the film should get an NC-17 or the preferable R.
Word is the ratings sheriffs have gotten hung up on four scenes in the movie, based on Rupert Holmes’ novel about a journalist trying to find the truth behind the breakup of a famed comedy team years before.
A lesbian sex scene – featuring a woman dressed as Alice in Wonderland – was less troubling than Blanchard’s trifecta romp with Bacon and Firth, who play the comic duo loosely based on Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. The next morning, Blanchard is found dead in the hotel room.
The “Sweet Hereafter” director writes in SLM magazine that the MPAA is concerned with “the actual number of thrusts seen.” Before shooting his actors, he recalls, “I resorted to playing with dolls, trying to figure out angles and configurations.” But in the end, he couldn’t disguise the sexual mechanics.
“I needed these scenes to feel lurid and unbridled,” says the Oscar-nominee and four-time Cannes Film Festival prize winner.
Having promised producer Robert Lantos an R, Egoyan has continued whacking away at the offending scenes.
But one insider tells us, “The mystery of the girl’s death hinges on that scene. If he cuts any more, the audience won’t know what happened.”
ThinkFilm is due to get a verdict on the latest edit this week. If the NC-17 sticks, the company could appeal, or it could release “Where the Truth Lies” without a rating, as it did with its raunchy comedy “The Aristocrats.”
It’s safe to say the movie is a departure for Blanchard, that sweet girl from TV’s “7th Heaven.” She admits her boyfriend “cringed” when he saw her triple-header – partly because “he would suffer endless taunts of ‘One degree of Kevin Bacon!'”