Restricted movie trailers have viewers seeing red
September 19, 2008 at 10:26 am by Curt Holman in A&ESlate’s Josh Levin has posted an interesting article on the resurgence of the “red-band trailers,”or movie trailers that contain more violence, sex and profanity than those permitted for all audiences. (The L.A. Times wrote another good one last year.) The expression comes from the red screen that reads “This film has been approved for RESTRICTED AUDIENCES ONLY,” as opposed to the “green-band” trailers you usually see at the cineplex that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) approves for all audiences.
In pre-internet days, the appearance of a red-band trailer before a movie was a rare, titillating surprise, like coming across somebody’s stash of skin magazines. I remember seeing a film at Atlanta’s old Screening Room art house and suddenly, there’s nude (or nude-ish) Amanda Donohoe in a preview of The Lair of the White Worm.
I haven’t personally seen that many red-band trailers in the movie theaters lately, but now they’re all over the internet and have become standard operating procedure for raunchy comedies, especially Judd Apatow-related productions like Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express. Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Made a Porno (opening Oct. 31) features a startling quantity of profanity, living up to the implications of the title. (Ironically, Smith had trouble with the MPAA for releasing an online only trailer that had no images from the film, just dialogue):
More after the jump:
Role Models (Nov. 7) with Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott and McLovin, looks pretty funny (but I stopped watching because it’s four minutes long, and didn’t want it to give away the story):
Sex Drive (Oct. 17 in Atlanta) looks like a combination of The Sure Thing with online pornography:
Burn After Reading (in theaters) has a fairly tame trailer compared to its red-band brethren:
Quarantine (opening Oct. 10), with its zombie-ish gore, just to show that they’re not only for comedies:
September 19th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I tried to explain the difference between red and green trailers one time and he swore red trailers didn’t exist or were no different.
Swear to god.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
That should be “to a friend one time”
September 19th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
The Role Models trailer is only 2.5 minutes