Seth Rogen Says MPAA Made Him Shave a Pita's Balls to Avoid NC-17 Rating for 'Sausage Party'

Seth Rogen reveals the one thing the MPAA wouldn't let fly in the filthy animated instaclassic 'Sausage Party.'

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Image via Complex Original
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When setting out to craft a delightfully vulgar and boundary-pushing animated movie about an existentially troubled hot dog wiener, the biggest hurdle you'll face is most certainly the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Through some generally lame tactics, the MPAA is tasked with slapping movies with anything from a G rating all the way to an NC-17. For Seth Rogen and the Sausage Party crew, shit reportedly got precariously close to the commercial purgatory of NC-17.

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"There is a very sexually charged scene in the film," Rogen told Howard Stern during an interview Monday. "There's a pita bread with a scrotum. That was something we kind of played with was, like, how far can we push this stuff?" Rogen  also revealed that, after initially submitting the film to the MPAA, they were met with the response they definitely didn't want to hear. "We at first got an NC-17 rating back," Rogen said. "Our fear was that it would then create this like big negotiation process where we ultimately had to butcher the fucking thing, you know?" Thankfully, that was not the case.

The MPAA's leading request, according to Rogen, revolved around the simple yet tedious act of shaving. "There's a pita bread and you see his ballsack in the end of the orgy and it had hair on it," Rogen told Stern whilst understandably laughing. "[The MPAA] asked that we remove the hair from the pita bread's ballsack. So we digitally shaved the pita bread's ballsack and removed the hair from it!"

So, for all us aspiring auteurs, here's yet another wise note from Seth Rogen on not angering the MPAA: make sure your anthropomorphic pita is entirely pube-free, then proceed with your R-rated art. Thanks, Seth Rogen. Will do.

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