It’s not going to stay this way, but for the time being, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno is NC-17. According to The Wrap, the film was hit with the rating for “numerous sexual scenes that the ratings board considers over the line.” The piece quotes someone from Universal confirming the story: “On its first submission the film did not receive an R but it is far
too early to say that there is any struggle to get there as the process
is only at its inception.”
Since the film is contractually obligated to be delivered with an ‘R’ rating, you won’t see this cut before the DVD release, if ever.
So what will be cut? The Wrap mentions a scene in which Cohen, as Bruno, appears to have anal sex with another man, and there are reportedly scenes with swinging dicks to rival Borat‘s magnificent man on man wrestling scene. But is any of the stuff in the current cut meant to be distraction for the MPAA? Is the anal sex scene something Cohen means to cut, figuring that the board might focus on that, which helps the more subversive but less easily pegged content slip?
When 20 minutes of the movie was shown recently at SXSW people fell over themselves to call it transgressive and far more over the line than Borat. Bruno buys a black baby in a bid to become famous, appears on a talk show to discuss his desire to find another man to help raise the baby, and targets stage moms in a scene where Bruno auditions kids for a movie and finds the mothers willing to agree to incresingly ridiculous demands to get their kids on screen.