For his book Naked Ambition: An R rated look at an X rated industry, photographer Michael Grecco set up at the AVN Awards and set out to shoot adult film celebrities and industry people in non-porn poses for a coffeetable-style art book of portraits.
Now, that subtitle has strange new meaning: A documentary film by the same title opens May 1 in select cities and preparing for a wider release, but after the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA) initially gave the film's trailer an "adults only" red band (instead of the "general audiences" green band), Grecco threatened to pull the film from MPAA ratings consideration and show it unrated, fearing that his "R rated" film was going to end up with an NC-17 rating. It's an interesting flap: There's no sex and very little full-on nudity in either the book or the film, just quick interviews with a lot of adult film folks as they're prepping and posing for tamer-than-they're-used-to portraits. For more, see the LA Times' article, 'Naked Ambition': The MPAA's still scared of sex.
UPDATE: The trailers I'm seeing online this week have both the green band and an R rating for the film. The Hot Blog has a trail of "unofficial" trailers showing successive edits: Porn Leaves a Trail(er) and points out that some of the earlier versions had more nudity, suggestive situations, and coarser language.
Anyway... If you're in Los Angeles this month, you can also see an exhibit of Grecco's Naked Ambition work, April 14-May 1, at Guy Hepner Contemporary.
Here's the trailer, via Grecco's MySpace page:
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