The Motion Picture Association of America seems to be stepping out of motion pictures and onto the internet this week, as they pulled down the teaser for Kevin Smith’s Zack And Miri Make A Porno.

You might remember the teaser picturing Seth Rogan (Zack) and Elizabeth Banks (Miri) riffing porn-audition comments from typical theater seats.

It was pretty funny, but why the MPAA got all involved is something that Kevin Smith has to clear up…

From his official site:

The MPAA called and said we had to take it down.

Here’s why: Weinstein Co. (like most studios) is a signatory of the MPAA. As such, there are protocols involving trailers that we failed to follow.

As with features, all trailers get rated get rated by the MPAA. The majority of them are for general audiences (Green Band trailers), but trailers packed with adult content (like our teaser) earns you what’s called a Red Band trailer.

Well, we didn’t go through this process - simply because, we felt, that since the teaser didn’t contain any footage from the actual flick, it wasn’t technically a trailer.

Boy, was I wrong.

Turns out all promotional material for any film financed/distributed by a signatory of the MPAA has to be signed-off on by the MPAA - including internet-only materials. I never realized this, as it’d never been a problem in the past: we’ve been doing ‘net-only teasers since “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” and nobody ever raised a red flag before (not even on the last flick, for which we also put up two ‘net-only teasers in advance of the rated trailer). But I guess since the teaser was so, shall we say, racy… a rating was in order.

We’re now officially submitting the teaser to the MPAA for rating. If they approve it, we’ll put it back up.

Sounds stupid to us. Since when has internet marketing been under fire by the MPAA? Was all the Cloverfield Viral footage submitted, or The Dark Knight viral footage? What about behind the scenes features for upcoming films distributed on the internet?

Last time we checked the MPAA rated films and theaters decided what to play in their houses. If the internet worked with a ratings board. Well, we probably wouldn’t be here without an R rating.