William Friedkin's 1980 thriller *Cruising*, starring Al Pacino as an undercover NYPD detective investigating a serial killer targeting New York's gay leather-bar scene, was derailed by a disastrous private screening for the MPAA's ratings chairman. Friedkin and producer Jerry Weintraub had hoped a friendly dinner and screening would smooth the film's path to an R rating, but the meeting instead triggered a lengthy, costly battle over content that Friedkin himself described as "pornography".

MPAA Classification and Rating Administration chairman Richard Heffner reportedly reacted with horror after watching the unedited cut, at one point declaring there weren't "enough Xs in the alphabet" to rate it and branding it a "59,000 X rating" film. The original edit reportedly contained around 40 minutes of explicit, unsimulated sexual content shot with genuine patrons of leather clubs, which Friedkin argued served the story by hinting at the detective's own psychological unravelling. After roughly $50,000 spent on further edits, the film eventually secured an R rating for release.