Seth Rogen fully expected an NC-17 rating from the MPAA for Sausage Party, an adult animated comedy that reinvents the definitions of filth and humor. We did, too, to be honest.
And initially, the film did receive the much-feared NC-17 label, Rogen recently told Howard Stern. To Rogen’s and everyone’s surprise, though, they were told Sausage Party could back away from this rating if the filmmakers made a little, um, let’s say cosmetic change to one of the characters in the orgy scene. (Of course there’s an orgy scene.)
“There is a pita bread and you see his ballsack in the end orgy and it had hair on it,” Rogen says. “And they asked we remove the hair from the pita bread’s ball sack … So we digitally shaved the pita bread’s ballsack and removed the hair from it.”
Out of the entire eight-minute orgy scene featuring our formerly favorite foods (not now, not after what we’ve seen), the only thing holding Sausage Party back was unshaved pita bread testicles. OK, then.
Rogen was prepared to cut a lot more than just some pubic hair. “We probably added six things into the orgy that we were like, ‘OK, these are like our sacrificial lambs,’” he says. “They are the chips that we’re willing to lose. And we lost like an eighth of one of them.”
Rogen certainly lucked out.
Sausage Party comes out Aug. 12. Watch Rogen explain the pita ballsack saga to Howard Stern below.