MPAA Pulls ‘Zack and Miri’ Teaser

Published by Jeff Leins on June 8, 2008

The MPAA requested Kevin Smith and the Weinstein Co remove the Zack and Miri Make a Porno teaser trailer from the web until they can deem it inappropriate for general audiences.

I’ll let Kevin Smith explain it in his own words:

“The MPAA called and said we had to take it down. Weinstein Co., like most studios, is a signatory of the MPAA,” explains Smith. “As such, there are protocols involving trailers that we failed to follow. As with features, all trailers get rated by the MPAA. The majority of them are for general audiences (Green Band trailers), but trailers packed with adult content (like our teaser) earns you what’s called a Red Band trailer. … Well, we didn’t go through this process – simply because, we felt, that since the teaser didn’t contain any footage from the actual flick, it wasn’t technically a trailer. Boy, was I wrong.”

Smith even goes on to say they’ve been doing Internet-only trailers for his last two films and haven’t received a message from Big Brother before.

When the teaser trailer came out last week, I thought it was strange it didn’t include the usual red band letting everyone know they’re about to listen to some adult language. But I didn’t really think past that since I’m an adult and I don’t think about age requirements for advertising material. Just because I still get carded when I go to the movies, doesn’t mean I remember that humiliation when viewing the World Wide Web.

The Quick Stop Entertainment site hosting it was getting slammed and the video was loading poorly, so I uploaded it to YouTube. It was a funny video and it’s promoting a movie I’m looking forward to, so why not? Some 20,000 people watched it there before YouTube yanked it at the request of the Weinstein Co. Something about “copyright infringement.”

I respect the Weinstein Co for trying to clean up the mess, but not the MPAA for making it in the first place. I’d let them know how much I disagree with their organization, but I’m worried they’ll find a way to censor me too.

Here’s the good news though, you can still watch the trailer right here. If you’re under 18 though, then the Motion Picture Association of America thinks you can’t handle it. Pretend there’s a red band at the beginning.

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