Seth Rogen and longtime writing partner Evan Goldberg are making their directorial debut with the apocalyptic comedy This Is the End, which comes out next week, and the two revealed today that they were aiming for an NC-17 rating. The movie, which stars Rogen and pals James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, and Craig Robinson as fictional versions of themselves fighting to survive the end times, features a ton of violence, drug use, and profanity, but the sexual content is what the directors felt was pushing it. Rogen and Goldberg told The LA Times that they purposefully shot for an NC-17 rating by making the movie raunchier than they wanted it to be so that they could trim out sexual content (like a sex scene “between a demonic beast and a human, and a satanic creature [who is well] endowedâ€) to get an R after the MPAA made its ruling. They were shocked to receive an R without having to make any changes. Here’s Rogen and Goldberg on the matter:
Goldberg: “In this movie, they let us get away with a bunch of erections. As long as it’s a demon, you can have an erection.â€Rogen: “We thought the words ‘too veiny’ would come up. The term that the MPAA uses is tumescence. It’s the volume of blood in a body part. And I guess they were OK with the level of tumescence. I’m proud to report we have a high degree of tumescence in our movie.â€