Amanda Seyfried Really Wants You To Know That She Wore A ‘Prosthetic Butthole’
“It was cool, it was exciting,” the actor said.
…and it wasn’t in the musical Cats.
It was for The Testament of Ann Lee , a movie one would not think particularly anus-centric.(Ann Lee was the founder of the Shakers)
This raises all sorts of questions:
1.) What?
2.) Since, as the article says, you don’t even see it in the film, what’s the point?
3.) Why did she need a prosthetic? Was her own unattractive (as ani go)? Or was she embarrassed to be seen with a naked anus, but could do it if the one shown was not, in fact, her real one.
4.) Will she be appearing an any other forthcoming movies wearing interesting and unusual prosthetics?
5.) I understand the saying “any publicity is good publicity”, but this makes me consider questioning that piece of show-biz knowledge.
As Lee birthed four children (all of whom died in infancy), Fastvold sought to depict the births “as real and direct and graphic and unapologetic as possible” using prosthetic vaginas.
So maybe the prosthetic undercarriage used in the birthing scenes had a front and a back.
I’m reminded of an episode of Friends where Joey was auditioning for a part that called for full frontal, noncircumcised nudity. He had been circumcised, so he was trying to figure out how to rig up a fake foreskin. I mean, I’ve seen like maybe a dozen episodes of that show over the years, and THAT had to be one of them. Hmph.
I wonder if there is some weird rule of the MPA (the group that gives out the G, PG, R, etc. ratings) that certain parts have to be covered for certain ratings, but doesn’t specify HOW they must be covered. Covering them therefore, even with a picture of what they are, even a very real one that can correctly be termed “prosthesis” can still preserve a PG-13 rating in what would otherwise be an R film if it showed the actor’s actual netherparts.
Relevant to this, and tangentially related to the OP of this thread, is Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 Return of the Living Dead, in which Linnea Quigley won her spurs as a “Scream Queen” by performing a strip tease in a cemetery and subsequently becoming a zombie. Quigley strips down to the buff, and apparently they thought that if she shaved her pubic hair they could get away with this. But the Powers That Be decided that this wasn’t an acceptable dodge, and so makeup man Bill Munns came up with a “Barbie Doll Appliance” to render her sexless.
I’d heard about this when the film came out (courtesy of the magazine Cinefantastique, which covered all aspects of such films) , but couldn’t find much more info with an online search. Obviously they wanted to cover her genitals (and, to answer the immediate question, the film still got an “R” rating, so I don’t think covering things up will rescue you from the wrath of the MPAA), but I’ve always wondered how far the appliance went. Quigley’s dance was fairly energetic and demonstrative, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it extended far enough to cover her anus, so as t avoid further problems with the ratings people. In which case this would have been a “prosthetic non-butthole”.
Designing, applying, and removing this piece of makeup would have been an interesting challenge. Quigley herself called it her worst FX experience. And that lady had been through a lot.
I want to note here that one of the articles online about this is entitled “Quigley Down Under”, which I think ought to qualify for some sort of Title Pun Award. In fact, I think there ought to be such awards, and maybe I’ll start a thread about that. Another candidate would be Peter Brancasio’s 1985 American Journal of Physics article “Looking into Chapman’s Homer: The Physics of Judging a Fly Ball”
And, as another parenthetical note, I observe that the aforementioned Quigley Down Under piece tells me that Kate Winslet’s genitals had been cast so that she could realistically and explicitly be shown giving birth in the 1996 movie Jude, so Kate Winslet beats Amanda Seyfried by three decades in the “Who Can Be the First Actress To Have Her Nether Parts Cast in a Prosthetic For a Birth Scene” award.
I seem to recall that the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie had topless mermaids, but it was OK, because they were prosthetic breasts worn over the actresses’ actual chests.
A quick search fails to turn up any corroboration of this, although I did find two sources quoting producer Jerry Bruckheimer that anyone auditioning for a Mermaid role had to have “natural” (non-augmented) breasts. But nothing about breast prosthetics.
You statement reminded me of a circa 1970 Playboy cartoon that has a policeman on a beach who has pulled an apparently topless woman aside, only to have her show him that she’s wearing breast-shaped bra cups over her real breasts. I couldn’t find a link to it online, though.
