You got an R rating for "Quills," but there's another film out right now, Requiem for a Dream" by Darren Aronofsky, that doesn't seem any more objectionable and yet got slapped with an NC-17 by the Motion Picture Association of America. You had trouble yourself with the NC-17 rating on "Henry and June" -- do you know why "Quills" coasted by with an R?

I have no idea. You know, we got an R and I was just happy I didn't have to go through an appeal. On the other hand, I think the ratings system needs some reworking. I don't think this is a movie parents should bring underage children to. My wife has this line: "This is not a film for children of all ages." It's not a Disney movie, obviously, and some people are going to be offended by the sexuality. If it's going to be too strong for them, they shouldn't come to this movie.

Others might find it provocative, thoughtful and sexy. But to my mind that's an adult audience. Not every movie I make do I feel that way about, but certainly I feel that way about "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "Henry and June" and this film.

What exactly would you do to rework the ratings system if you had that power?

I don't know. I just think it needs to be thought out a little more carefully. Maybe there needs to be a couple of different kinds of R's. If there's an NC-17, it should not be the equivalent of the X rating. We should open up the adult categories more and more and encourage Americans to see adult-themed movies. I think otherwise we deny ourselves movies about sexuality. I mean, everybody's thinking about sex all of the time. Look at daytime TV: "Oprah" and all of those shows talk about sex constantly. And yet we pretend we're not interested when we're talking about movies, where sex is depicted as just a visual with two beautiful bodies coming together and has nothing to do with the mentality of sex or with enlarging the libido.

It's almost as if the more a movie's cleaned up, the more pornographic it becomes. It's anti-human, and more like jerking off to magazines. Whereas European films have traditionally been able to go into adult relationships. I think there's a huge audience in America for those kinds of films.

The odd thing is that anyone of any age can walk into Barnes & Noble, pick up Sade and read the most grotesque, macabre depictions of sexuality ever imagined. Why is it that it's the visual that disturbs people?

You know, I don't think it frightens people. I think there are people who really want to control the culture, and it's a holdover from Puritanism. But movies make a lot of money, and there are persons who want to get in and control the content of those things.

On the other hand, I think there's a good argument for not marketing certain things to children -- a lot of that is valid. The danger is if the argument is not held within close boundaries. You'll see Joe Lieberman arguing correctly against test-marketing R movies with younger children; there's something terribly wrong about that. But the other side says, "It's not just the marketing. We ought to go into all Hollywood movies and all content." That's where it gets really scary. A lot of that comes from the urge to control others in every way. Often it's from people who are the deadest inside, the most desiccated personalities.

The perfect example is the Grand Inquisitor scene in "The Brothers Karamazov," where Christ comes back to earth and the Inquisitor says he has to be sentenced to death once again because he's ruining the setup -- that people need miracle, mystery and authority, and he's going to destroy everything. Similarly, the Marquis is presented in this film as someone who would disturb the status quo and therefore must be kept imprisoned.

Are there any artists of our age who challenge society in the way Sade did?

Well, Doug Wright said he wrote the play because of Robert Mapplethorpe and Jesse Helms. They were engaged in this death-lock struggle, and theirs was a symbiotic relationship where they actually needed each other. As for me, I think Henry Miller was important that way, as well as Lenny Bruce, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence. All of those people were banned and repressed because of what they wrote and said.

I hear your next film is going to be about Liberace.

I hope we get to do it. He's another one of these extreme characters I'm attracted to. Right now we're working on the script.

Any idea at this point of whom you want for Liberace?

A friend of mine named Robin Williams would love to play him. He was in my office not so long ago. There was a picture of Carol Channing and Liberace we were looking at, and he did this brilliant dialogue between the two of them. We all fell over on the floor. In a way, he has lived the Mr. Showbiz life himself, so there's an aspect to the character he would really understand.

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