Last NC-17 film I saw: The Dreamers. Actually, I watched it a couple times — The first time I unwittingly rented it at Blockbuster on a whim — A bad, bad choice because Blockbuster edits the hell out of NC-17 films, something I should’ve remembered from renting Romance to watch for a grad school film class — then having no memory of the scenes that were brought up for study in class.
Now I just stick to Netflix — and Ironweed, which recently sent me This Film is Not Yet Rated. Directed by Kirby Dick, the thought-provoking, funny film looks at the dark side of the MPAA rating system — specifically the who, hows and whys of films that’re given NC-17 ratings.
Of course, many films that get NC-17 ratings go through a re-edit to get an R so the studio will release the movie, or release it more widely. Boys Don’t Cry, for example, originally had an NC-17 rating. The director Kimberly Peirce says the MPAA gave her 3 reasons — one of them being that the character Lana’s orgasm is too long: “This is totally about Lana’s pleasure. So there’s something about that that’s scaring them, that’s unnerving them.” For the MPAA, female pleasure seems “unnatural or scary,” Kimberly says. “I think generally unfamiliarity’s what breeds these NC-17s.”
Perhaps that unfamiliarity factor’s what also gives same-sex sex scenes higher ratings too. This Film is Not Yet Rated shows a montage of side-by-side comparisons of similar sex scenes, one hetero and rated R, the other homo and rated NC-17.
The MPAA rating system has lots of other problems — favoring big studios for one. But what bugs Kirby the most is the lack of transparancy in the process. Namely, who are these MPAA people passing judgement on the film? What are their qualifications? According to Joel Federman, author of Media Ratings, the MPAA is the only movie rating system that doesn’t disclose who its rating board members are.
So Kirby gets serious — and hires a private detective to tracks down the 9 MPAA raters. The detective even identifies the members of the MPAA appeals board — which includes two members of the clergy.
Watch the film to find out who the are. You’ll also see interviews with John Waters and Matt Stone, get a sense of the history of the MPAA rating system invented by Jack Valenti, and learn to never look at MPAA ratings the same way again. This Film is Not Yet Rated initially got an NC-17 rating; the final version’s unrated.
Oddly, This Film is Not Yet Rated never brings up the Blockbuster editing issue, though they seem related to me. Anyone know if Blockbuster’s online rental service also sends edited versions?
