Seth Rogen Reveals What They Had to Shave From 'Sausage Party' to Get R-Rating From MPAA (NSFW)

Warning: Some of the content in the video above is, appropriately, NSFW.

Seth Rogen had heard the stories. As now-legendary filmmaking lore goes, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker submitted early edits of their fornicating-puppet comedy Team America: World Police to Hollywood’s rating board, the MPAA, that were intentionally overtly, excessively crude. The idea being that the MPAA would then ask them to tone it down to land an R rating (vs. NC-17), and they’d end up with the final cut wanted in the first place.

“And that’s what we did,” Rogen, the co-writer, producer and voice star of the fornicating-hot dog animated film Sausage Party told Yahoo Movies (watch above) when he stopped by our studios with costar Michael Cera. “And then we didn’t have to scale it back as nearly as much as ultimately we thought we would… If anything it’s dirtier than I imagined it would be.”

Like Team America, Sausage Party was initially slapped with the dreaded NC-17 rating, but through interactions with the MPAA that were “shockingly” less thorny than anticipated, was able to land on an R.

Related: Here’s Why Puff Daddy Didn’t End Up as a Voice in ‘Sausage Party’

When asked what exactly Rogen and team had to cut, it came down to one simple element: scrotum hair.

“There’s a part where one of the characters puts another one of the character’s scrotums over his eyes,” Rogen explained. “It had hair on it at one point, even though it’s a food, it had hair on it. And the MPAA asked that we remove the hair from the scrotum. So we digitally shaved the scrotum.

"Other than that, they were OK with it.”

Sausage Party opens Aug. 12.