todd haynes once promised us an nc-17 gay romance. with pedro pascal in it, it's now "most likely" r. i'm being so brave about this.

Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via Variety, with background from IndieWire, PinkNews and Out

In May 2023, Todd Haynes made us a promise. "This will be an NC-17 film," he told IndieWire at Cannes, explaining that his star at the time, Joaquin Phoenix, kept "pushing me further."

On Saturday, on the red carpet at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, Haynes revised the forecast. De Noche will "most likely be an R-rated film," he told Variety, adding that he saw no need to make its visual language "prurient." Note the "most likely." Note that he did not say "will be," whatever the headlines say. We are clinging to "most likely" like a life raft.

how we got here

Phoenix walked off the project five days before cameras were due to roll in Guadalajara in August 2024, reportedly with "cold feet," Out and PinkNews reported, and the production shut down. It came back with Pedro Pascal as a hard-boiled 1930s Los Angeles cop and Danny Ramirez, who had been cast as Phoenix's lover, as a boarding school teacher. The two fall in love, cross the wrong corrupt politicians, and run for Mexico. Variety says filming is done. There is no release date.

what haynes actually said

The rating talk was the small part. "What's going on between the two men is so complex and so moving, but ultimately, it's a love story," Haynes said. "They're exposing themselves to each other, and they're exploring things about their masculinity, their vulnerability." And: "Anyone can identify with what's happening."

Which is lovely, and we believe him. But there is a specific kind of gay man who heard "Pedro Pascal" and "NC-17" in the same breath and has been waiting about three years for that, and we would like a moment with our feelings. Still a Todd Haynes love story about two men on the run in 1938. Still Pedro Pascal. We'll be there opening night, R and all.