Good news and a bit of bad news:
American Psycho is generating large publicity because of NC-17 rating, but this could lower the box take.
I suspect the rating will be reversed then LGF will be big winner with major free publicity - maybe this is the plan...
Father rushes to rescue of Toronto actress in Psycho sex-scene controversy
Next role: Mary Magdalene
Jane Thompson
National Post
Steve C. Wilson, National Post
Canadian actress Krista Sutton handling the media in Park City, Utah, yesterday. Sutton acts in a sex scene in American Psycho that resulted in the film receiving an NC-17 rating in the United States.
Krista Sutton is under siege. The Canadian actress is holed up in her hotel room at the Sundance Film Festival fielding calls from The Times of London, the Los Angeles Times and many other print and television outlets that want to know exactly what went on in a bedroom scene that slapped Lions Gate Films' new movie, American Psycho, with an NC-17 rating, America's most restricted.
For the record: it involves a three-some, a mirror, a clothes hanger, cold sex and money.
So great is Ms. Sutton's fame that her father, Bill, has accompanied her to Sundance to deal with the press. "I'm not planning to go to the movie," says Bill Sutton. "I'm here to lend support, and ski when I'm not needed."
A graduate of Havergal College, a tony private girls' school in Toronto, and the University of Toronto's drama program, Ms. Sutton shot her scene in three days. Her role has few lines but is crucial to the story. It details the sexual escapades of a serial killer through an evening and morning during which he calls a prostitute to form a menage a trois.
This week the Motion Picture Association of America cited Ms. Sutton's three-way scene with Christian Bale and Cara Seymour as the reason for barring anyone under 17 from seeing the movie. The regulator cited no objection to any other element in the tale of a yuppie serial killer. The rating has made the film, already much talked up in the industry and the press, into one of the most anticipated at the prestigious film festival in Park City, Utah.
"I know why it got [the rating], it's not so much the content of the scene," explains Ms. Sutton. "It's totally cold, banal sex. They're reacting to tone. As Mary [Harron, the movie's Canadian director] says, you can't cut tone." There is no real violence in the scene either, says Ms. Sutton, it's implied. Though one critic has already described the movie as a slasher film, Ms. Sutton says in her scene the violence is "all in your head, which makes it even more horrific."
"I went in thinking, okay I'm going to do this almost like a movement piece ... The shots, my reactions to some of them were hilarious ... I just decided to go for it with a lot of movement and attitude," Ms. Sutton says. It was a difficult scene to rehearse, she says, because certain positions had to be struck for the camera, though some things, she says, became easier when it came time to film.
"I thought, oh, my God, we're doing it ... There's a moment in the film where he [Mr. Bale] says, 'Take off your dress.' I had to go for it. I kind of surprised myself ... the bustier comes off, and you get to see the real goods, no false advertising."
In the heat of the moment, Ms. Sutton abandoned the idea of keeping a small G-string in place and whipped it off.
In preparation for the scene, she stopped eating anything with sugar or fat and dropped 10 pounds. She got false nails and an extensive wax depilatory treatment called a porno wax, or Brazilian as it is known in the trade.
While Ms. Sutton is pleased with how things turned out and her parents are proud, there has been a drawback. "I was being offered every hooker role after that for several months. I guess because they know I'll do it," she says.
In her next role, Ms. Sutton will be playing Mary Magdalene in Godspell in a revival by her parents, Pat and Bill, who run the Georgian Theatre Festival in Meaford, Ont., on Georgian Bay.
As for the NC-17 rating, Ms. Harron is appealing the ruling. The rating could result in a loss of as much as 75% of the movie's potential box-office revenue.
"I know why it got [the rating], it's not so much the content of the scene," explains Ms. Sutton. "It's totally cold, banal sex. They're reacting to tone. As Mary [Harron, the movie's Canadian director] says, you can't cut tone."
There is no real violence in the scene either, says Ms. Sutton, it's implied.
Though one critic has already described the movie as a slasher film, Ms. Sutton says that in her scene the violence is "all in your head, which makes it even more horrific.
"I went in thinking, okay I'm going to do this almost like a movement piece ... The shots, my reactions to some of them were hilarious ... I just decided to go for it with a lot of movement and attitude," Ms. Sutton says.
"There's a moment in the film where he [Mr. Bale] says, 'Take off your dress.' I had to go for it. I kind of surprised myself ... the bustier comes off, and you get to see the real goods, no false advertising."
In the heat of the moment, Ms. Sutton abandoned the idea of keeping a small G-string in place and whipped it off.
In preparation for the scene, she stopped eating anything with sugar or fat and dropped 10 pounds. She got false nails and an extensive wax depilatory treatment called a porno wax, or Brazilian as it is known in the trade.
While Ms. Sutton is pleased with how things turned out and her parents are proud, there has been a drawback.
"I was being offered every hooker role after that for several months. I guess because they know I'll do it," she says.
In her next role, Ms. Sutton will be playing Mary Magdalene in Godspell in a revival by her parents, Pat and Bill, who run the Georgian Theatre Festival in Meaford, Ont., on Georgian Bay.
Godspell arrives at Toronto's Bathurst Street Theatre on March 10 for a four-week run.
As for the NC-17 rating, Ms. Harron is appealing the ruling. The rating could result in a loss of as much as 75% of the movie's potential box-office revenue. |
