Weinstein Company Hires Top Lawyers to Take on MPAA

According to the MPAA, The King’s Speech is just as terrible for your children as Saw VII. The British period piece’s R rating (which is due to one scene in which the king swears while trying to rid himself of his stutter) has stirred up controversy over a ratings board that’s tough on language and sexuality but soft on gory violence, and The Weinstein Company has hired a team of top lawyers as it prepares to appeal the rating.

In addition to the rating for The King’s Speech, the Weinsteins’ legal team—which includes David Boies, who worked on the case to overturn Prop 8 in California—will appeal the NC-17 rating for Blue Valentine. The movie, which stars Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling as a young couple on the brink of divorce, was slapped with the revenue-killing rating for a scene involving simulated oral sex.

Head honcho Harvey Weinstein told the Los Angeles Times that the MPAA is reading too much into the sex scene. “I’ve always felt that the ratings board saw what wasn’t there,” he said. “It’s just a credit to the persuasiveness of Derek Cianfrance’s directing skills. There’s no oral sex. Michelle Williams isn’t even naked. It looks like she is, but it’s just the angle of the shots.”

Weinstein also found it laughable that The King’s Speech received an R rating, saying, “I know [the MPAA] doesn’t really want to have people wondering why my brother Bob’s movie, Piranha 3D has the same rating as The King’s Speech. I mean, Bob is laughing about how much he got away with in Piranha while his poor brother Harvey is getting killed here with a movie that most kids would think is a Disney movie.”

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