Actually, yes there is a quota on boobies and especially on snatch and dick. It’s not a hard and fast number that never changes, but I have heard many directors and producers talk about ratings negotiations with the MPAA. And yes, if you have too many boobies, you might go from a PG-13 to an R, or conceivably further, depending on what the boobies are doing.
You can say fuck one time and still get a PG-13 rating as long as you’re not talking about actual fucking.
Jennifer Connelly, Heather Graham, Salma Hayek, Ashley Judd, Gretchen Mol, Mary-Louise Parker, Chloë Sevigny, and Kate Winslet have all done recent full nude scenes.
I’ve heard there’s actually a concept called the free boob theory. The idea is that once you get an R-rating any further inclusion of naked female breasts is “free” - you’ve already got an R and no amount of naked breasts alone will get you an NC-17. So you might as well include more naked breasts to draw in viewers who’ll want to see them. And this works even if there were no nude scenes originally - if your movie got an R-rating because of language or violence, you now might as well add some gratuitous nudity.
I feel like female nudity is definitely decreasing in movies. The last film I can remember seeing with a naked woman in it was The Wrestler. And before that, I can’t even remember. And I regularly watch movies in the theater. I am, however, noticing an increasing trend of male cocks. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Zack and Miri Make A Porno, the recent Wolverine movie, Watchmen, The Dewey Cox Story to name a few…all featuring gratuitous schlong scenes. Why can they show cock like this, but not a pussy?
In Working Girl, there’s a scene where Melanie Griffith is cleaning an apartment in her bras and panties. It was a true WTF? moment for me, that they’d bother to put that sort of scene in a Harrison Ford movie. 
Yet another stripper example is **Natalie Portman ** in **Closer **. You can get a whole 'nother thread out of actresses who won’t do nudity taking roles where nudity is kinda the point.
Kirsten Dunst is an annoying example of that. The script for Crazy/Beautiful had her character doing a nude love scene. Dunst signed for the role and production started. Then she told the director that she thought the scene would work better if she kept her clothes on instead.
What’s he going to do at this point? Fire her and start filming over with a new actress? He was forced to accede to Dunst’s decision and put the best face on it he could.
I’ve heard actors complain about how often love scenes are among the first scenes filmed and they’re faking intimacy with somebody they’ve just met. But this is the reason why directors set schedules up that way.
The story as I first heard it was that it was dropped to keep a PG-13 rating. According to Wikipedia, Dunst went so far as to rehearse the scene nude on a closed set before backing out. Even though I think the scene where she goes to the kitchen would have been stronger if done nude, I can’t get too upset about it because it’s just not that necessary.
Meh, it’s barely visible. And why would you think that?
Natalie Portman filmed full frontal for Closer, but the director, Mike Nichols, cut that footage out of the final film because he decided it was too “gratuitous” or “exploitive” or something. Fucking prick. He also reportedly had the footage destroyed, so we’ll never even see it in a director’s cut or leaked on line.
I bet Nichols kept his own private copy, though.
You can see her naked in “Hotel Chevalier” a short film that offers some background on “The Darjeeling Limited.” I don’t think she does full frontal, but you definitely get a nice shot of her rear end. It’s on the DVD of Darjeeling, though you might still be able to watch it on YouTube.
It’s online. Someone posted it on the SDMB when it was released and I watched it out of curiosity. The only thing you see is her nude in profile. You don’t even see her butt; just her thigh.
My understanding was that Miss Portman asked for the scene in Closer to be cut.
No, it was Nichols. I did a pit thread on it at the time that had the relevant link. I’ll see if I can find it.
I remember Portman saying something like “he’s more protective of me than my parents are.”
You can see very clearly that she doesn’t have a butt.
Here’s my original pit thread on the deleted Closer scenes –Aaaarrrgghhh!!! Mike Nichols must die!
Here’s the news link
here’s the quote:
Nichols is a bastard for cutting that footage.
My stepdaughter used to have this unfortunate habit, actually. For all I know she may still clean the house that way when I’m out of town and cannot possibly walk in on her.
Another one that comes to mind: In Terminator 3, when the T-X is sent back to the present. Fans of the series will know that only flesh, or things enclosed in flesh, can be sent back, so time-travelers arrive naked. Given that that’s been well-established, it would be completely non-gratuitous to show some breasts in that scene, but they went with all of those camera angles where you never quite see anything. I wouldn’t quite say that the absence of nudity was gratuitous (we saw plenty to make it clear that she actually was naked), but it was still notable, I think.
Actually, I think I remember the scenes with the naked TX looking super goofy because they had her long hair perfectly covering her breasts and totally immobile.