Hey, did you hear the one about the adult movie Pirates? Yes, they also released a cut rated… aRRRRRgh!

In an anticipatory mooring to the wild success of this summer’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, this movie and, indeed, all sorts of nautical swashbuckler DVDs and strange tie-in products have made their way to the market in the past six weeks — everything except that entirely un-clamored for special edition of Cutthroat Island (sorry, Renny Harlin). There have been legitimately licensed, pirate-themed fruit snacks and white chocolate M&Ms, the utterly bizarre and justifiably long-forgotten Cheech Marin/Tommy Chong/John Cleese 1983 pirate spoof Yellowbeard (with David Bowie thrown in for good measure!), Echo Bridge's release of Blackbeard and even an electronic talking piggie bank, among many other items. But the loosely associated tie-in that certainly drew the most attention is Pirates, an erotic action-adventure romp from singularly monikered writer-director Joone and his company, Digital Playground.

While racking up all manner of intra-industry awards, the epic-scale film also made history for its seven-figure budget and as the first modern adult feature to be re-edited to receive an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, the body which rates all the mainstream big screen fare of its seven signatory studios. “From the time we were writing the script, we wanted to make a movie that could play without any sex in it,” says Joone. “We went in with that mentality — saying that we needed a great story, and as strong characters as possible.”

Wait… characters, acting? Didn’t those go the way of the dinosaur in adult films of the post-video age? “Most of the girls that are in it are contract stars,” says Joone, of a cast that includes headliner Jesse Jane, Carmen Luvana, Janine, Devon (above), Teagan Presley and Austyn Moore. “And I wanted to use Evan (Stone), who’s to me like the Bob Hope of the industry. But you go in writing characters that they can play, not characters that they have to be actors to play. You’re not making them do things that are way out of their range.” Duly noted.

Still, when it came time to solicit the MPAA for an R rating, they didn’t seem as enamored with his efforts at legitimate storytelling structure. “I remember the first cut we gave them had a lot more sex in it and they came back with a flat no,” says Joone. “It was, ‘This movie is not going to pass.’ We asked if they thought it was possible to get an R-rated cut out of it, and they said, ‘We think you can.’ So that was a little light at the end of the tunnel, and then it became a journey of how to get there, because they don’t really tell you what isn’t passing, they just say very general things, like, ‘It feels like it has too much sex.’ Or they even said that they were OK (with certain content) because the characters were on their honeymoon, but in this scene it’s people that are not married. So you’re just faced with some things where you’re like, ‘Oh, OK then. I guess if you’re not married, you’re not supposed to have sex.’”

It was a six-month process of give-and-take, spanning from December of 2005 through May of this year, and one that resulted in a movie far less explicit or titillating than any number of R-rated mainstream thrillers. Joone left the experience a bit baffled but unbowed. “Out of context it doesn’t work as well,” he notes. “There were scenes where, from day one, there was no problem with it, but suddenly, in the last two iterations, there was a problem with it. You felt like you were chasing your tail. Studios get way more leniency with their films… both because of stars and the fact that they know it’s going to be a theatrical release or whatever. I mean, we could not, in our movie, have two girls kissing. And in how many movies have you seen that?”

The admittedly hamstrung but still diverting, R-rated cut of Pirates, which imports the loopy adventure and soused leading man of its Hollywood namesake, is available from MTI Home Video with a clutch of extras, while if it’s academic comparison you crave, the triple-disc version of the original movie offers both standard and WMV-HD presentations of the film in 16x9 widescreen, plus bloopers, photo galleries, audio commentary tracks with the stars, behind-the-scenes specials on the visual effects and other production elements of the movie, casting videos (umm… what?), cast biographies, trailers and more.

And as for a sequel? “Everybody wants me to do it,” admits Joone with a sigh, “but for me, if I’m going to do it, it’s got to be 10 times better than the first one.” He sees the future of big budget adult productions as a rather tenuous one. “My philosophy is that [Digital Playground] is not a porn company, we’re an entertainment company,” he says. “You don’t have a studio system. You can do whatever kind of movie you want as long as it has sex in it. And so, as a filmmaker, you sort of look at the sex as the commercial that pays for the movie. But the problem with adult right now is that there are not a lot of filmmakers and storytellers in this arena. A lot of the films that are being made are gonzo or pizza-man-knocking-on-the-door-type scenarios. I think for the future to be successful, you need creative filmmakers behind the projects. If you have that, you will be successful — talented people putting together a great product. Our focus has been about making great movies that are geared toward couples. They’re not about degradation — it’s great people, good times.”

After a little more talking, too, Joone seems to be coming around to the notion of another Pirates adventure, something the enormous grosses of the Disney sequel as well as the to-scale market success and critical embrace of his film certainly seem to indicate an audience for. “I’m really thinking about doing it,” he says, “so long as I get the right pieces together.”