Ever since premiering at Sundance, Don Jon’s Addiction has been picking up a lot of buzz. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut has been shocking critics with its content, mostly because of all the porn depicted in the film. Most people who have seen the film agree that the sexual content is intense and as it stands, the film is set to receive the dreaded NC-17 rating from the MPAA.
From what we’ve heard, all of the explicit scenes in the film are important to the story and make sense within the context of the movie, but when has that ever mattered to the MPAA? Unfortunately, the association is pretty strict and in order to get his R rating, Gordon-Levitt is being forced to cut some of the porn.
When asked if he was going to trim the film for an R rating, the actor told THR the following:
Yes, we expect we have to do that and I’ll be getting started on it as soon as I get back. I think it is important that those images are in there but what precisely you see isn’t that important. What’s important is the rhythm of the film, the repetition of what the Don Jon character does, over and over.
Reportedly, Gordon-Levitt had already done much zooming, trimming and cropping of the porn scenes for the current version of the film, so it’s a shame that he’s going to have to take even more out. That being said, Don Jon’s Addiction earned rave reviews at Sundance and I’m sure even with the additional cuts, it’ll still be an excellent movie.
Check out some additional comments below from Gordon-Levitt. He speaks about what was already cut out and how he refuses to release it as anything but an R rated film.
“It actually feels like you’re seeing more than you are, and we spent a lot of time carefully cropping the clips so technically you’re not seeing anything you wouldn’t see in a rated-R movie,” Gordon-Levitt said after the film debuted. “We decided to take out all the penises and vaginas, and that’s what we have here.”
“I always thought of it as an R-rated movie. This is a version for Sundance,” he told Deadline.com reporter Mike Fleming. “There is the version that’s here now, but we’ll see what the MPAA makes of it. Me personally? I think it deserves an R, as it is now. We’ll see, but I absolutely am in no way shape or form going to put this film out as anything other than an R.”
For those unfamiliar with the plot, it stars JGL as “a porn addicted lothario who begins a relationship with two different women and tries to unplug from the smut he thoroughly enjoys.” So there you go, porn is clearly essential to the story and what ever Gordon-Levitt has included was obviously put in for a reason and to serve a purpose. Nevertheless, it’d be foolish to release the film with an NC-17 so those looking to see the uncut version will likely have to wait for the film’s Blu-Ray release.
What do you make of all this? Are you excited for Don Jon’s Addiction? Are you upset that we won’t get to see the uncut version?
