Evan Rachel Wood is as mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore. Specifically, she’s furious at the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America, the US’ ratings board) for demanding a scene in the upcoming Charlie Countryman, in which Shia LaBeouf’s title character goes down on Wood’s, be removed from the final edit lest the film suffer an NC-17 rating (which replaced the “X” certificate, and is generally considered to be a kiss of death for a film’s commercial prospects as many cinemas won’t screen NC-17 films).
On Twitter, Wood lashed out at the MPAA’s “censorship” in a blistering screed: “The scene where the two main characters make ‘love’ was altered because someone felt that seeing a man give a woman oral sex made people ‘uncomfortable’ but the scenes in which people are murdered by having their heads blown off remained intact and unaltered.
“This is a symptom of a society that wants to shame women and put them down for enjoying sex, especially when (gasp) the man isn’t getting off as well!”
Wood’s open letter (of sorts) isn’t the first of its kind; Ryan Gosling famously spoke out against Blue Valentine’s being slapped with an NC-17, which he and producer Harvey Weinstein suspected was due to a scene in which Gosling’s character goes down on Michelle Williams’.
