This Film Is Not Yet Rated

There are moments that I am just not bright, moments that I do my best impression of Barney Fife, take my 6-gun out of my holster and promptly shoot myself in my foot. One particularly job interview stands out. Maybe it was the fact that I have a father who has a bone disease that is slowly crippling him. Maybe it is the fact that I have a brother who walks through life on one leg after fate put on bloody boots and walked the white line of the highway. Maybe it is just because I don’t like Hummers. [Trevor is on his own here!: pub.] Now unless your name is Col. Kurtz and you’re about to attack some Bedouin village, you really have no reason to have one of these gas guzzling, ozone depleting vehicles. I guess the people who drive these metal hulks should be praised because they don’t try to cover themselves in any veil of respectability. They are proudly announcing that they are self-centered Republican-voting jackasses with no care or concern for any one else. They are just public announcements of trying to make up for a God given shortcoming, if you know what I mean. All I know is, there it was, a Hum-Vee with the company logo, sitting in a handicap parking spot right in front of their office. Ushered into the President’s office, I shook hands with the doughy middle aged gentleman across the desk from me. Now most people have a picture of their family on their desk, he had a picture of that thing, the steel equivalent of 7 deadly sins put on 4 wheels, and him as if to announce to any potential client, “I am going to screw you so badly, so get ready.” All I know, after a two-hour sale’s pitch on his part, telling me what a great company he owned, the boss leaned back in his chair and asked if I had any questions. Money on the table, I opened my mouth and instead of saying where do I sign, for some reason, out of my mouth came, “Are you handicapped?” Confused and puzzled, he muttered, “No?” Leaning across the desk, I looked him right in the eyes and said in my best bass voice, “Then why are you parked in a handicap zone?”

If you want to watch the cinematic equivalent of this story, of a director sticking his head in the lion’s mouth, check out Kirby Dick’s documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. If you want to have people see your film, and have it shown at the local cineplex, you have to pass it through the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system. While totally voluntary, most of the major theater chains will not carry an unrated film, confining your labor of love to small art houses and low rent theaters. It also means that several of the major box stores are not going to carry your baby. In other words, your film without the MPAA blessing is going to be financially DOA. So what is a talented young filmmaker like Kirby Dick (Oscar nominated for Twist of Faith) to do, he reached down and hocked a big one right in the eye of the MPAA. So not only does he make a muckraking documentary about the MPAA, but he submits his film to the MPAA for a rating. (They gave the film an NC-17 rating.) This is either one of the bravest films ever made, or you are watching a director re-enact Custer’s Last Stand, probably both.
In order to fend off potential regulations imposed by the states or federal government, and to keep their big budget films from getting banned in a particular city, in 1934, Hollywood adopted The Production Code or Hays Code (named after MPAA head Will H. Hays) as it was popularly known. Basically, this code set hard fast rules of what could and could not be shown. The code included such things as no ridiculing of religion, and clergy were not to be shown as clowns or villains, no nudity, no sexual perversions, no offensive words, the sanctity of marriage was to be upheld, the villain could never win, the flag of the United States was to be treated respectfully, etc. All films released had to have the stamp of the Hays office on them. The Production Code basically spelled an end to local censorship boards. Problem is these hard, fast rules put a serious cramp on storytelling and like a child testing his boundaries, directors tested how far they could push things. In 1950, the studios were forced under anti-trust legalization to give up their theater chains. This, along with the Supreme Court reversing itself and declaring that films were protected under the 1st Amendment and a host of European films flooding America that did not need the MPAA seal, led to the Code slowly crumbling over the next decade-and-a-half. By the early 60s, filmmakers were exploring subject matter they could have never touched before like gay rights, civil rights, drug usage, colorful language and showing graphic situations. Enter stage right in 1966, new MPAA President Jack Valenti, a former assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, who quickly tried to put his foot down and impose the Code against a movie called Blow Up. MGM released it without the seal of approval. Believing this wild-west mentality was going to be suicidal and fearing further loss of his own power, Valenti, part flim-flam man, organized a series of private meetings between government officials, theater chain owners, and studio executives. Valenti, realizing that going back to the Code was impossible, urged that a ratings system, like other countries were using, be adopted. (G, M, R, and X were the first 4 ratings.) Using the fear of government intervention, he got theater chains to agree not to carry films that were not given a MPAA rating. Over the years, critics have charged that Valenti has used the MPAA to feather his own nest.

Director Kirby Dick looks at the problems with, and some of the more ridiculous aspects of, the ratings system. He details the charge that independent films that deal with tough subject matters are going to be dealt with harsher than mainstream studio films that might take a juvenile approach to the same subject matter. He also shows that the ratings system is also more hung up with nudity and sex than violence. A movie like The Passion of the Christ, which was as brutal as anything ever put on film, gets an R while a movie that is sexually graphic like Dreamers gets an NC-17. Dick also examines the ratings creep (what would have gotten an R ten years ago now gets a PG-13) and the pettiness and ambiguousness between PG-13, R, and NC-17. Now in and of itself, this would have been a great documentary, but Dick takes things one step further. The people who give the ratings are anonymous. The only thing known about them is, according to Valenti, they are a cross section of parents of children between the ages of 5 and 17. Dick hires a private detective to see if this was true. What he finds is some of these raters have been on the board for a decade, long past their child raising years. In some cases, it is not even clear if these people ever had children at all. Socially, they are a tight knit group with good jobs and mainly white - not the cross section of American society as reported. Some living next door to each other. Not only does Dick videotape these people’s lives, his private detective gets his hands on the actual reports the raters filled out while watching a film. Dick, then turned around, and turned the film into the board for MPAA approval.

This documentary is brilliant and much needed. Some of the worst aspects of the ratings system needs to be changed. I rage more than anyone else about the NC-17 rating and how it basically turns into censorship, but do we need to throw the baby out with the bath water? Maybe the real question is, does the ratings system matter anymore? Parents now have web sites like Movie Mom, which will spell out in detail the concerns a parent might have with a film. I don’t want my children (when I have them) seeing adult films, but with P2P sites on the Internet and DVDs floating around, a good parent has to be like the Boss Man in Cool Hand Luke to keep R and NC-17 films out of their children’s hands. I saw it happen to my brother, a great dad. His son off-handily mentioned a horror movie that no 12-year-old boy should see, causing my brother’s eyes to get as big as saucers with concern. In a society with free flowing information, which is a good thing, how do you keep things out of the hands of children? The MPAA guidelines and this documentary have to be part of an ongoing conversation.

Verdict: A Great Documentary