THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED / Kirby Dick (2006)

September 18th, 2006 by Scott Marks

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This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)

Directed by: Kirby Dick

Written by: Kirby Dick, Eddie Schmidt

Cast: Kirby Dick, Ben Affleck, Becky Altringer, Allison Anders, David Ansen, Tom Arnold, Darren Aronofsky, Jamie Babbit, Kevin Bacon, Alec Baldwin, Christian Bale, Maria Bello, Annette Bening, Elizabeth Berkley, Halle Berry, Jason Biggs, Juliette Binoche, Selma Blair, Rachel Blanchard, Pierce Brosnan, Richard Burton, Raquel Castro, Thomas Haden Church, Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, Sandy Dennis, Paul Dergarabedian, Michael Douglas, Atom Egoyan, Stephen Farber, Colin Firth, Jane Fonda, Peter Gallagher, Martin Garbus, Louis Garrel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Joan Graves, Eva Green, Mary Harron, Will H. Hays, Richard Heffner, William Holden, Cheryl Howell, Lindsey Howell, Jeremy Irons, Chris Isaak, Johnny Knoxville, Wayne Kramer, Diane Lane, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lawrence Lessig, Eugene Levy, Jon Lewis, Natasha Lyonne, Kyle MacLachlan, William H. Macy, Olivier Martinez, Maggie McNamara, Sandra Oh, Kimberly Peirce, Michael Pitt, Dan Rather, Bingham Ray, David L. Robb, Peter Sarsgaard, George Segal, Chloë Sevigny, Kevin Smith, Kevin Spacey, James Spader, Matt Stone, Sharon Stone, Hilary Swank, Elizabeth Taylor, Justin Theroux, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Tucker, Liv Tyler, Tracey Ullman, Deborah Kara Unger, Mark Urman, Jack Valenti, Jon Voight, John Waters, Marlon Wayans, John Wayne, Steven Weber, Robert Wisdom

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Genres: Documentary

Running Time: 97 min.

Rating:

Did you hear the one about how the Motion Pictures of America Association (MPAA), a lobbying organization for the movie industry, rates movies? If you show tits, they give it an NC-17. If you take a chainsaw and lop them off, it gets an R and parents can bring their kids.

They must be right, for if anyone was to blame for giving me access to “dirty” movies it’s a set of parents who never once censored or questioned their kid’s moviegoing habits.

Mom and Dad probably thought Midnight Cowboy was a sequel to Stagecoach and didn’t flinch when it came to taking a fourteen-year old to a drive-in screening of the then X-rated drama. Seconds after Bob Balaban orally relieved Joe Buck, my dad leaned across the front seat and whispered to my mom, “I don’t think this was a good movie to take the kid to.”

Being big for my age, or “husky” as slacks salesmen used to say, the MPAA only got in my way a few times. At age sixteen I didn’t make it past the box office for A Clockwork Orange. A painfully withdrawn fellow sophomore, void of humor and, being smart for her age, a full year younger, decided to exercise what little power she had. With a voice more vomit-inducing than ipecac she refused my admittance on the grounds that she knew “for a fact” that I was not eighteen-years-of-age.

Nor did I have much luck at a thousand-seat suburban dream palace where the white-haired, well-groomed manager personally sold and ripped tickets. Not only wouldn’t he entrust the cash drawer to his teen staff, he was always the first to caution my father against bringing his son to certain R-rated movies. After the Midnight Cowboy fiasco, any hopes of seeing Harold Robbin’s smutty The Adventurers were quickly dashed and replaced by Disney’s homogenized The Barefoot Executive.

Even more deflating was an underage visit to Russ Meyer’s Cherry, Harry & Raquel where friends and I actually managed to gain access to the auditorium. Halfway through the opening credits a nervous manager rethought his decision, yanked us out and cheerlessly refunded our money.

After turning eighteen the MPAA could kiss my husky ass. Satan knew better than to allow me to spawn and a lack of parental responsibility (and a penchant for profanity) always drew me to R-rated features. It wasn’t until years later, flanked with the knowledge that most newspapers refuse to run ads for NC-17 films that I began to reconsider the perils of rating movies. Should a handful of “average” Republican parents and an appeals board complete with two priests, one Catholic the other Episcopalian, be allowed to rule on cinematic morality?

Not much has changed since the late twenties when Will Hays (a Kiwanian, Roatrian and Presbyterian Elder) was called upon to rid Hollywood’s screens of morally pernicious material. People who refuse to watch old black-and-white movies because they’re “corny” frequently have the puritanical ratings board to blame. Find some of the “pre-code” films released between 1928-1934, before Hays’ list of “don’ts” and “be carefuls” became law. You’ll discover a world filled with vice, corruption, brutality and reel after reel of wanton sexuality. The “Hays Office,” as it collectively came to be referred to, quashed any form of free expression for almost the next forty years.

While Hays’ equally repressed successor Catholic Layman Joseph Breen is never mentioned, This Film Is Not Yet Rated is careful to rigorously examine the words of his present day incarnation Jack Valenti. Until his retirement a couple of years ago, Valenti spent decades riding herd over the MPAA. For all his well-intentioned public relations razzle-dazzle, Valenti can only come up with one sound argument. A truly great film will find an audience no matter what it’s rated. Unfortunately, it takes an audience of paranormals to find a film that has no advertising.

From the standpoint of a single, childless male well past his eighteenth birthday, I am not entirely against a system meant to alert parents of a movie or CD’s content. The hard part is how one goes about defining and categorizing obscenity. Whether prefaced with a “Wanna’” or followed by a “you,” f*ck is f*ck. According to our current arbitrary standards, one “f*ck” will earn you a PG-13. Say it twice and you’re guaranteed an R.

Short of installing an alligator-filled moat, you can’t find a more inaccessible edifice than the MPAA fortress on Ventura Blvd. in Encino. With a horde of prospective P.I.’s, to choose from, director Kirby Dick awarded the surveillance job to Becky Altringer, an extremely likeable gay single mom. She and her lover’s daughter Lindsey spent weeks parked outside the MPAA’s garage keeping track of members’ license plate numbers. Her defining moment arrives when a security guard leaves his station long enough for her to videotape a list of coveted phone extensions tacked to the booth wall.

The film consults many artists whose work was taken to task by the almighty board. The strongest of the talking heads is Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce who argues that a film is more likely to get an NC-17 if the sex depicted involves gays. She was equally stunned to discover that the board sanctioned Hilary Swank’s brains splattered on a wall, but found Chloe Sevigny’s extended orgasm over the line.

Another witness to the insanity is director Atom Egoyan whose Where the Truth Lies was awarded an NC-17 kiss of death. When I interviewed him, Mr. Egoyan kept referencing the fact that the board insisted that he limit the amount of “thrusting” depicted in a pivotal MMF three-way. Sure enough, excessive thrusting is one of the key violations the MPAA looks for. Why can’t I make a living watching movies and counting humps?

Needless to say, due to a glut of sexually explicit clips This Film Is Not Yet Rated is playing unrated. While much of it is intended to illustrate, some scenes, particularly a montage depicting violence against women, are borderline gratuitous. The filmmakers were so eager to earn the ratings board’s scorn that they appear to take an almost schoolyard delight in pushing the envelope.

From a strictly historical perspective, the first movie to challenge the ratings board (and win) was the Italian import The Bicycle Thieves, not The Moon is Blue as this film contends. There is also a great story behind how violence in the first Indiana Jones sequel coupled with a Gremlin in a microwave forced the board to dream up the child (and box office) friendly PG-13 rating. Instead of presenting a more concise overview, the film settles on a couple of Super-Size Me-styled sidebars, childish, sub-South Park animation, a score reminiscent of TV’s Charlie’s Angels and one too many back-seat shots of a giddy Dick.

Aside from its historical shortcomings, the film is most negligent for not damning several prime culprits. Cowardly newspapers that tow some invisible moral line by refusing to run ads for NC-17 movies are given a pass. Complacent audiences, eager to lap up whatever slop is heaped on their plates, also deserve a share of the blame. The reason that so many contemporary films rake in millions is due in large part to America’s indiscriminate taste for the undemanding.

If the film’s main goal was unmasking all of the MPAA’s players, the detective work paid off. We now know their identities, but their logic, not unlike their lodgings, remains impenetrable.

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