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Some Material May Be Inappropriate or Mystifying, and the Rating May Be as Well
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| Lindsey Howell, left, and Becky Altringer investigate the Motion Picture Association of America in "This Film Is Not Yet Rated." |
By A. O. SCOTT
If you’re a regular reader of movie reviews in this newspaper, you’ve no doubt noticed that most of them end with a brief italic note, written by the critic, explaining (and occasionally mocking) the film’s rating. For some readers, this is the most important part of the review, and for this critic it is often the hardest to write. The little boxes that appear at the bottom of the print advertisements are sometimes helpful — we all know nudity or drug use when we see it — but they can also be mystifying. What is “intense adventure violence”? Are “thematic elements” harmful to children? When the box says “some language,” just how much language does it mean? And which language? Would a movie with no language be less dangerous?
“This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” a feisty, intellectually engaging new documentary by Kirby Dick (“Sick,” “Derrida,” “Twist of Faith”) does not so much answer these questions as explore just why they are so difficult to answer. The Motion Picture Association of America, which devised the current rating system and administers it, can be a remarkably secretive organization. Founded by the major Hollywood studios to head off the threat of government censorship and run for most of its history by Jack Valenti, a former staff member in Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House, the association often seems more arbitrary and less transparent in its workings than any federal agency this side of the C.I.A.
To find out who serves on the ratings board and what criteria they use, Mr. Dick hires private detectives, who park outside its nondescript offices in the Encino section of Los Angeles, scribbling down license plate numbers and taking pictures of employees on their lunch breaks. Mr. Dick even rummages through trash bags and discovers important, if puzzling, clues about why “Memoirs of a Geisha” qualified for a PG-13.
These whodunit elements are interspersed with more conventional documentary material: interviews with filmmakers and scholars, clips from movies that have run into trouble with the board, and occasional sound bites from the irrepressible Mr. Valenti, who tells us that the folks who hand out the ratings are “neither gods nor fools.” That narrows it down a bit, though not enough for Mr. Dick, who uncovers some curious inconsistencies in the association’s accounts of its procedures. Do the clergymen who sit in on appeals board meetings — along with representatives of theater chains and film sales companies — have a vote or not? No clear answer is forthcoming. Does the ratings board take a harder line on sex than on violence? On gay sex than on straight?
The evidence Mr. Dick gathers and the testimony of directors like Kimberly Peirce (“Boys Don’t Cry”) and Matt Stone (“South Park”) paint the Motion Picture Association as an outpost of prudishness and repression. (Bingham Ray, former president of United Artists, goes further, describing it as “fascist.”) The record of its recent decisions suggests a special squeamishness about depictions of female sexual pleasure and a picayune fastidiousness about certain body parts. A glimpse of Maria Bello’s pubic hair, for instance, threatened to doom “The Cooler” to an NC-17. But then again, “A Dirty Shame,” John Waters’s 2004 film, received the same rating just for talking about certain outré practices while showing almost no skin at all. (When Mr. Dick submitted a cut of this film, it was slapped with an NC-17, an unsurprising outcome that led to some hilarious, Kafkaesque telephone conversations between him and Joan Graves, the chairwoman of the ratings board. IFC Films, which is not owned by a major studio and therefore not required to submit its releases to the association, is distributing the film without a rating.)
These decisions have commercial as well as artistic consequences, since some of the biggest theater chains, retail stores and video outlets avoid the NC-17 rating as a matter of policy. Filmmakers who want their movies to be seen — and who often need to fulfill contracts requiring that they deliver a film with a certain rating — are thus compelled to cut their films to the association’s standards, a process that often involves guessing just what those standards are.
Mr. Dick, unabashedly on the side of the filmmakers, is particularly concerned with art films — movies obviously intended for grown-up viewing that are nonetheless subjected to a regime ostensibly designed to protect children. But — at the risk of sounding like Maude Flanders — what about the children? How are parents supposed to navigate the flood tide of popular culture that engulfs their kids at younger and younger ages? Does this ratings system help? Could it be improved?
Mr. Dick’s lack of interest in these questions is frustrating, and the narrow scope of “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” makes it more of a culture-war broadside than a nuanced work of cultural inquiry. It is, nonetheless, an engaging and entertaining movie, one that tries to illuminate an aspect of moviemaking — and moviegoing — that is deliberately left in the dark.
THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED
Opens today in Manhattan.
Directed by Kirby Dick; directors of photography, Shana Hagan, Kirsten Johnson and Amy Vincent; edited by Matthew Clarke; animated graphics by ka-chew!; produced by Eddie Schmidt; released by IFC Films. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at West Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 97 minutes. This film is not rated.
New film attacks Hollywood's "censorship" system
Kirby Dick, director of the new film "This Film Is Not Yet Rated,"
By Arthur Spiegelman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - When director Kirby Dick wanted to learn the identities of the most secretive group in the film industry, he resorted to a time-honoured Hollywood tradition. He hired a private eye to follow them and go through their garbage.
Dick, whose movie, "This Film is Not Yet Rated," opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, was carrying out what he considered a noble mission. He wanted to expose the secret "censors" of Hollywood -- the people who view movies before they go into cinemas and classify them according to content.
Their decisions -- denoted in numerals and letters of the alphabet, like "PG-13" (parents warned that content may be inappropriate for children under 13) and "R" (restricted, under 17 admitted only with a parent or adult guardian) -- determine who sees which films.
Dick argues that the process amounts to censorship because it forces filmmakers to tone down -- maybe even gut -- their works rather the incur the wrath of the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board.
The group keeps the names of most of its board members secret from the public.
Although not a censorship board in the traditional sense of the term, the board wields enormous power in Hollywood. Few filmmakers, for example, want their works rated NC-17, which bars anyone 17-years-old or under from attending, because newspapers and TV stations often won't accept ads for such films, and many cinemas refuse to show them.
Moreover, NC-17 carries the stigma of an "adult movie," which in many people's minds translates into "pornography."
Many ratings board decisions stem from the nature of sex scenes in films, including such factors as the length of an on-screen orgasm. Dick's movie illustrates the point with steamy shots that were cut from several films -- "Where the Truth Lies," "Boys Don't Cry" and "Storytelling" -- to meet ratings requirements.
RATINGS GUMSHOE
Dick's decision to hire a private investigator named Becky Altringer and film her following ratings board members from their MPAA workplace to their cars came at a curious moment in Hollywood.
The whole town is currently abuzz over various investigations of another private eye -- Anthony Pellicano, the former "private eye to the stars" accused of wiretapping and other illegal activities on behalf of his A-list Hollywood clients.
Dick said he did nothing illegal in hiring his own investigator and filming her at work, scenes that help form a dramatic arc in his production.
"That was the only way I could get their names. They have been kept secret for nearly 30 years. If what they are doing is in the public interest, then the information about who they are should be public."
The MPAA says it keeps their names private to protect them from public pressure. The board members that Dick followed did not know he was making a movie and thought they were being stalked, a source close to the board said.
The MPAA has said its ratings board consists mostly of average Americans whose mandate is to provide guidance for parents on the nature of films' content, such as the level of violence and sexuality.
The board was established in 1968 to replace a more rigid system.
Dan Glickman, the head of the MPAA, denied any suggestions that the film industry trade association would go after Dick's movie in a counter-campaign. "Hey, this is a great country and the First Amendment is great" Glickman said,
"He raises some issues that we are looking at, but the essence of the rating system has been profoundly helpful to parents," Glickman added.
Dick said he would like to see the current ratings system replaced by one that gives more detailed information about what a film contains so that parents -- and parents alone -- can determine what their children see.
As for his own film, he submitted it to the ratings board and it received an NC-17 classification. But he decided to release it as an unrated movie, and thus avoid the stigma of
NC-17.
