Wednesday, 21 July 1999

STILL RANTING & RAVING

Well, I'm about to make myself a liar. I promised that Tuesday's MPAA Rant (THB 7/20) would be all and that today, I would get to some news. I was going to tell you about my local AMC posting ushers inside the doors of American Pie all the way through the film, checking IDs and tickets. I was going to rail on about blackandwhitefilm.com, which I believe to be using the idea of protesting the MPAA's NC-17 rating to promote a movie by making it clear just how much sex you will get to see when the movie hits the screens, cut or uncut. I was going to crow about my own weekend piece on Warner Bros. (THB 7/17), though there was a now corrected mistake upgrading Mark's little brother Neil above his power station. Heck, I was even going to praise Peter Bart of Variety for a really nice piece of reporting in his Backlot column that was devoid of the usual attitude that irritates me so. Then there was Bond, Blair Witch, how JFK Jr.'s crash really did effect the box office and the Salon Magazine piece that has started what seems to be the first major wave of negative press for Ain't It Cool News and my feelings about my part in it.

All of that and more was going to be in today's column. But my commitment to the ratings issue takes precedence. In fact, more than 3000 words of precedence today. If you read yesterday's column, you have a pretty good idea of my feelings on this. Before I get to the meat of today's column, let me answer some questions that came in on Tuesday.

"A" stands for adult.

The idea of using penetration as a standard for NC-17 or X rated films is not about setting the bar so filmmakers can try to squeeze under it. The point of this whole exercise is to create a system where this particular conflict with the ratings board will no longer stir the fires of rage for filmmakers who are well intended. If someone plays with the A by making a movie with everything but graphic penetration, well, bully for them. How adorable. But pornography, as much as any other area of the film world, is a business. No theater will book a porn film just because it gets an A, anymore than theaters that book NC-17s now play the softcore porn that shows up at 1 a.m. on HBO and Showtime. Nor is it likely that one film will take on the weight of a major legal fight over ad placement. The problem with the X and the NC-17 as it regards to porn is that right now, porn has to be rated in the same category with Henry & June. So if The New York Times takes ads for Henry & June, every porn film that wants an ad has a legal case. That's a class action. That's a threat. And if folks like Parker and Stone decided to cut right to the edge of NC-17 in getting an A, so what? Kids still won't have access. (And frankly, South Park may have the first erect male penis in any R-rated movie ever, probably slipping by the MPAA's sense that it was animation. That was a photo, folks. Instant NC-17. But they got away with it.)

My proposed scale, specifically. G - General Audiences. PG - Parental Guidance Suggested. PG-13 - Contains material that may be too much for the under-13 crowd. R - No one under 17 admitted without adult supervision. Contains specific sexual or violent material or conveys an overall tone of an adult nature. A - Over 17 Only. Contains specific sexual or violent acts or tone that is deemed inappropriate for anyone under 17. NC-17 or X - Over 17 only. Contains graphic depiction of sexual acts, including graphic acts of genital or oral intercourse.

The many rating scales that exist in other countries are very interesting, as is America's TV rating system, with its specific calls on content (from S for Sex to V for Violence to a number of increments in between). But I tend to think that we'd be asking too much to expect a board like ours to start differentiating between 13-year-olds and 15-year-olds.

Just how broken is the MPAA system? Well, Jack Valenti wrote a "guest column" for Daily Variety this week and I'm going to take the opportunity to break it down point by point. Let's see just how much we really do disagree, because I don't think it is as extreme a situation overall as it's been made. I actually feel that by making it a dire situation, Mr. Valenti makes it easier to dismiss calls for change as unreasonable and excessive. Likewise, for those of us who believe change is necessary so that serious filmmakers will not be essentially barred from making "adult" films, calls for revolution make us vulnerable to being seen as reactionaries. Let's give the floor to Jack, shall we?

"VARIETY GUEST COLUMN: RATINGS SYSTEM REMAINS A NECESSARY BIZ ASSET" By JACK VALENTI, July 20, 1999

Voltaire has Candide ask Martin, "But what was this world created for?" To which Martin replied, "To drive us mad." If you put "movie rating system" in place of "world" and imagine Martin is a movie critic/producer/director, then you can understand the current noisy kvetching about ratings for a number of pictures.

A (thankfully) small band of critics and producers/directors has been infected with a bad case of the "whines," plastering together the true and the false about the ratings system to derive a disreputable plausibility, which to them is real, when in truth it is delusion.

DP: Well, Jack, plastering together the true and the false may be delusional. But that doesn't mean that you haven't admitted that there is some truth in these arguments. I'm here looking for it with you. I mean, I assume you are looking for the truth, right?

JV: Let me cite some factual rebuttals: 1. The rating system was not created for critics, producers, directors, studios or distributors. Not at all. It was constructed for parents, to give them advance cautionary warnings so they can wisely guide their young children's movie watching. Over the last 12 or so years, 70%-75% of parents with children under 13 have found the voluntary movie rating system "Very Useful" to "Fairly Useful" in helping guide their youngsters' moviegoing.

DP: Now who is plastering together the true and the false? The ratings system works for most parents. Absolutely. But it was created to shield the industry from censors at the behest of the industry. As you seem to admit in your next paragraph.

JV: 2. When I became head of the MPAA, the very first action on my part was to throw away the odious Hays Office and its catalog of "do's and don'ts," which reeked of censorship. In its place I inserted (with the theater owners as partners) a voluntary process whereby films were rated so that parents could more suitably decide what movies they wanted their children to see or not see. But no producer/director had to excise one frame of his/her film. No one was forced to submit a film for a rating. Everyone was free to take his movie to market without a rating. Most crucial, and indispensable, government was kept out of this voluntary enterprise.

DP: True enough. Until recently. When it comes to films that float between the R and the NC-17 lines, the MPAA has come to have the very real effect of being a censor board. And as much as government censors would be worse, your failure to acknowledge what everyone (thankfully, everyone) now understands about this process is a damned shame.

PAGE TWO: "Washington, Constant Whiners And Civil Rights"