American NC-17 rating hurts audience

“ Business- wise, I think it’s not so great. I think that one of the things they found when they were testing the film is that, surprisingly, given how old the two of us are ( he’s 47 and Firth just turned 45), we actually had a high appeal with younger viewers, girls and guys who were in the 18- to- 25 range.

“ And obviously with an NC- 17 they could still go. But if someone appeals to them, it means you have a chance that maybe the 16-and- 17- year-olds might want to go. So there’s a big piece of the audience that’s cut out.”

Paradoxically, the rating would have been right in tune with the 1950s era they were playing.

“It was an oddly puritanical era,” Bacon says. “ People were ready to party after World War II, but not in public. You had Ozzie and Harriet

and Doris Day. And all the stuff that the Rat Packers were doing was having some cocktails and smoking cigarettes. They weren’t doing it in public.” Adds Firth: “Yes, the maximum of naughty was jokes about how drunk you were. They were just jokes about seeing double and stuff. And yet it was still very homophobic and racially discriminating, those times.”

Neither actor seems all that concerned about the censorship, although they do seem a tad tired of talking about it, especially Firth. It’s near the end of a long day of interviews and Firth’s five- o’clock shadow is so scruffy, it might have jumped the International Date Line. The Philadelphia- born Bacon and the Hampshire, Englandborn Firth hadn’t worked together before teaming up to work with Toronto filmmaker Egoyan. The actors hadn’t even met each other, but they did have a filmmaker friend in common: writer/ director David Koepp, who made Stir of Echoes with Bacon and Apartment Zero with Firth.

“ I called him and I said, ‘ Guess what? I’m doing a movie with Atom Egoyan and my co- star is Colin Firth,’ ” Bacon says.

“ And he said, ‘ Omigod! I’m so jealous of Atom Egoyan, because I’ve always said you should work with Colin. I thought you’d really enjoy him.” The two certainly did enjoy working with each other, much to the relief of Egoyan. He had signed the two to play Collins and Morris on little more than a hunch. The idea was to have Firth play the suave Englishman, while Bacon would be the brash American. On paper, the roles were easy enough for both actors to pull off, but not necessarily doing it together — or while stark naked.

“ It was the thing that kept me up at night,” Egoyan says in a separate interview. “ You’re always wondering about the chemistry, which is a very overused expression, but in this case it was absolutely essential. If the act wasn’t believable the whole thing just would have fallen apart.” The duo had the added distraction of trying to put together an act that looked as though it would be a hugely popular ’ 50s act, but without seeming to be like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis — a comparison that book implies, but which everyone involved in the film sought to avoid.

“ I felt it was a very distracting element of the book, this whole Lewis and Martin thing,” Egoyan says.

“ It would be a catastrophe to try to duplicate it.”

His fears proved unfounded. Bacon and Firth took to each other like long- lost brothers. The wonder of it is that they managed to work up believable comedy routines without roadtesting their act, something many other actors would have demanded.

“It would have been fun to have the time and the guts to do that sort of thing,” Firth agrees.

“ We fantasized about getting an act together. We had a pretty easy crowd ( on set) paid a lot of money to laugh at us very loudly. I don’t know how we’d go down with a hostile crowd. But they had us convinced that we had something going.” And there would be something of a patron abuse problem, if Bacon and Firth were to remain in character while doing a live club date. Onstage, Vince Collins is a smooth as all get-out. Backstage, he can be brutal.

Says Firth: “ If we actually did this live, Kevin would be up there singing ‘ Just a Gigolo’ and I’d go backstage and have to beat some guy up.” The two wouldn’t mind, however, to step into the supremely pampered world of Collins and Morris, where booze and babes are just a wink away. Their hotel room in the movie is so stuffed with booty, it looks like Captain Hook’s treasure chest.

“I wouldn’t mind staying in that hotel room sometime,” Bacon says, smiling again.

“I wouldn’t mind the backstage life for a while, either,” Firth allows.

“ It was a parallel universe. I’d like to live there for a while. The big lobsters and the girls and the pills and everything. If I could lead that life with impunity . . .”

After being so intimate with each other, could Bacon and Firth ever go back to being just casual friends?

“ I’ll always have a very special place in my heart for Colin Firth,” Bacon deadpans.

Firth concurs. Now that the sex is out of the way, they can be true pals.

“ It was a hump we had to get over, so to speak.”

Ba- da- bump, again.

They’re so outta here.