Studios: Starving the theater industry out

[Bobby Henderson]

How are you going to draw that line, though?

Like I said earlier, quite easily. Sex in movies features actors who are pretending to have sex. The act is simulated. In porn there are performers who are clearly having sex for real in front of the camera.

The real problem of course is various parents all having vastly different ideas of what they do or don't want their kids to see.

The R-rating is more than enough of a warning for simulated love scenes where, God forbid, a woman's nipples or butt might get exposed on camera. The truly real problem is many parents are lazy as hell and just don't bother reading warnings, rating verbiage, etc. The theatrical release of Watchmen was one hilarious example I witnessed. I watched it in the Grand Auditorium at the Warren Moore theater. I was shocked at how many families with children in tow were seated in theater. They just thought, "super hero movie, let's go!" Obviously they didn't bother noticing the R-rating and its verbiage about graphic violence and graphic nudity present on the movie posters and even TV commercials. When "Dr Manhattan" made his first appearance in the show it was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. Lots of adult hands were trying to cover the eyes of their kids. I'm sure all those parents were totally pissed at Warner Bros for allowing such a perverse movie to be made, but it's 100% those parents' fault for not doing a little looking before buying movie tickets.

Meanwhile so many parents are on freaking auto-pilot at home. They're fixated on their own things while not paying enough attention to their kids. Often there are "parents" who never actually grew up and are just adult sized versions kids who are absentee-raising kids. They use the content in Hollywood movies as a convenient scapegoat for when their kids start drifting off the righteous path. But the kiddies have access to much more intense, mind-warping, destructive stuff at home. And hardcore porn isn't the worst of it either. Teens do a good job of waging psychological warfare on each other via social media apps.

Ratings systems are no good without clear consistency. The MPAA does get specific about some things. You can get away with one or maybe two F-bombs before your movie gets an R-rating. They're all over the map when it comes to rating movies based on violence. Hell, I see graphic violence in cable TV shows that goes way into what I thought was R-rated territory. But then so does many video games. The NC-17 rating was a totally worthless exercise because it wound up being no different in rule than the X.

I'm actually astonished the teen pregnancy rate is a mere 1/3 what it used to be 30 years ago. With there being so much easy access to sexual content, be it simulated sex in movies and TV shows or the real, explicit stuff in porn, I would have predicted an opposite outcome. People my age like to rag on young adults and teens for ways how they are failing. But they do seem a good bit smarter about not getting knocked-up!

[Marcel Birgelen]

Like I said earlier, quite easily. Sex in movies features actors who are pretending to have sex. The act is simulated. In porn there are performers who are clearly having sex for real in front of the camera.

Well... then you have movies like the two Nymphomaniac movies, where some of the sex looks real, but some of it is apparently CGI or done with prosthetics. It doesn't help that the movie was never rated in the U.S. either.

[Bobby Henderson]

I watched the two Nymphomaniac movies on Netflix. That two part saga is a very rare exception where visual depictions of oral or genital penetration are shown on screen. They say the depictions were done via props and other effects, but it still looked pretty real. I guess one important difference is the shots are on screen briefly, unlike porn videos which have an entirely different style of editorial pace (for obvious reasons). The vast majority of dramatic, non-porn movies given an NC-17 rating for sexual content got the rating for offenses like going over the limit on number of humping thrusts allowed or showing the male member too much.

[Jon Dent]

One can easily make the argument that the MPAA is fairly irrelevant with ratings since they are so lazy about it. They have a checklist of offenses (F-BOMB, NIPPLE, DONG, BLOOD) and never take the tone of anything into account.

Oh God, he said 'fuck' three times! Let's ignore the fact that its a documentary on teenage depression that might help someone and slap an 'R' rating on it.

Oh, God, I see a naked breast! Let's ignore the fact that it's a character drama about breast cancer and they decided to show how traumatic it actually can be and slap an 'R' rating on it.

Hmm, hundreds of people are running through the streets, screaming and being vaporized into dust by enormous mechanical tripods that shake the theater with their footsteps and horn blares? Shots of hundreds of dead bodies floating down a river in front of a young child? No problem, there's no overt blood so let's give it a PG-13 so the kids can see a science fiction reenactment of 9/11. That's War of the Worlds, a good movie but incredibly violent and dark and in no way appropriate for kids.

[Bobby Henderson]

One can easily make the argument that the MPAA is fairly irrelevant with ratings since they are so lazy about it. They have a checklist of offenses (F-BOMB, NIPPLE, DONG, BLOOD) and never take the tone of anything into account.

Exactly.

That's really what's so silly about American-style attempts at enforcing "morality." The people enforcing the standards only appear concerned about superficial bullshit, not the actual message coming across.

Clearly the top priority for the MPAA is penalizing nudity. The problem is there's really nothing obscene about the human body; the nude female and male forms have been featured in paintings and sculpture for thousands of years. Context is what matters. America is still stuck in the childish Madonna-Whore construct with how we treat sexuality and how we still treat women as if they can't be trusted to make their own decisions.

The rules on profanity are pretty silly. It makes me think about George Carlin's classic bit seven dirty words you can never say on television. Words by themselves don't really do anything. Again, it's all about context -the subject matter being presented, how the words are being used. Bleep out some words; anyone can fill in those blanks in their head.

It's actually very easy to create very offensive, harmful material that features no nudity or curse words. Daytime TV talk shows, airing at times when kids are just getting home from school, have all kinds of rancid subject matter discussed all the time. Maury Povich is retiring after 30+ years of running his daytime talk show. One of the late night TV comedians had a video montage of him delivering paternity test results on stage, "you're not the father!" Trash TV pulls in a lot of advertising money. So do the 24 hour "news" networks with their rage-porn.

Obviously there are far fewer restrictions with depictions of violence in movies and other dramatic content. It's possible to have Holocaust inspired images in movies like Spielberg's re-make of War of the Worlds and still get a PG-13 rating.

People in the MPAA say they're trying to "protect" children. The motivation seems to be preventing those impressionable kids from getting any bad ideas. It takes considerably more than merely policing the visibility of boobs and utterance of f-bombs to do that. There is really no practical way to shield kids 100% from adult-oriented themes. The parents must be there to help those kids put the message they're hearing in the right context. Too many grown-ups don't have the guts to do that.

Not only is the MPAA dangerously close to irrelevance, but the organization has engaged in what could be considered illegal activity. For many years the MPAA has conspired with major movie studios to help get hard R-rated movies down under the NC-17 wire. They'll give very specific feedback on what needs to be edited out. But MPAA has been far more vague when dealing with independent movie studios and productions. They have a harder time editing a NC-17 rated movie down to an R-rating. Usually they have to cut a lot deeper into their content. A number of filmmakers who've worked big studio projects and independent projects have talked openly about how the MPAA interacts differently with major studios. But then the major studios are the primary funding source for the MPAA.

Theatrical movies just can't take the kinds of dramatic chances they could in the past. The productions have to appease the MPAA. They have to abide by the rules of the Save the Cat screenwriting bible. And they can't do anything to piss off anyone in overseas governments (such as China). By having to be made so much more safe it is making Hollywood movies far less culturally relevant. I hardly hear any friends or colleagues of mine talking about a movie they saw. It's all about some TV show they're watching, or even a book they're reading.

[Mike Blakesley]

Why don't you guys write to the MPAA and vent your concerns? They aren't reading Film-Tech, I can almost guarantee it.

I'm actually astonished the teen pregnancy rate is a mere 1/3 what it used to be 30 years ago. With there being so much easy access to sexual content, be it simulated sex in movies and TV shows or the real, explicit stuff in porn, I would have predicted an opposite outcome. People my age like to rag on young adults and teens for ways how they are failing. But they do seem a good bit smarter about not getting knocked-up!

Not that I don't give youngsters credit for being smarter about sex these days, I think they ARE, but I also think the decline in teen pregnancies could be partly due to kids aren't dating as much as they used to. I'm not sure if it's that way across the country or world, but we've always had teens on our staff, and when they're leaving after their shift, it's long been a habit of mine to ask what their plans are for the night...just making conversation. Used to be they would say "Oh, me and (boyfriend's name) are going to hang out" or "Going driving around with friends" or "There's a party out at (name)'s house" or whatever. All situations that could easily lead to "doing it." Now, at least 99% of the time they say they're just going home, or they're going to watch TV with their parents, or they have homework. Often they have no plans at all. Right now we have five teens on the crew and none of them have a girlfriend or boyfriend. And it's not like we employ unpopular kids -- they're all just normal teens with a lot of friends. I have a niece who is a senior in high school and lives in Billings, she's smart and beautiful, but she just doesn't really have time for dating, she says.

I've had close to 75 kids work for me since buying the theater. We've had plenty of interesting situations crop up with our teen workers, but none of them has ever been a premature mom or dad during their tenure with us.

[Bobby Henderson]

Why don't you guys write to the MPAA and vent your concerns? They aren't reading Film-Tech, I can almost guarantee it.

Documentaries have been made on the MPAA's practices such as their collusion with major studios to give their releases an additional advantage over indie product at locking up movie screen bookings. Yes, the MPAA may seem off topic, but they're actually relevant to the problem of movie theaters being starved of content, good quality content. Normally movies drive conversations in the break room at work. Movies normally do a lot to shape popular culture. That influence on the zeitgeist has been eroding in recent years.

There's no shortage of complaints about all the damned super hero movies, as well as the re-makes and even sequels of those re-makes. Something of a paradigm shift has occurred. More producers making grown-up dramas and comedies, as well as anything with content that is challenging to viewers, are giving up on releasing their stuff in movie theaters. More and more of the artsy, indie, original stuff is just going straight to streaming. They don't even have to stick with the 2 hour format either. And they can still shoot the "movie" or whatever anyone wants to call it with anamorphic lenses to make the end result look cinematic.

Not that I don't give youngsters credit for being smarter about sex these days, I think they ARE, but I also think the decline in teen pregnancies could be partly due to kids aren't dating as much as they used to.

That's definitely one of multiple factors. I think a lot of teens and young adults are living more through their phones, computers and gaming consoles these days. The digital divide has cut down on socializing in person. One thing I've noticed in my town: there are far fewer bars and night clubs than there used to be. Lawton is an Army town too, so that's saying something. It's not like all the night-owls suddenly started going to church either.

A major culture shift has also happened, first in Europe and more recently in the US. Women in America are now growing up with different goals in mind. It isn't get married and have kids after high school anymore. Over 60% of college students in the US are women. Fewer ladies are waiting around for "Mr Right" to show up. They want to have their own careers, make their own money, and then maybe do the getting married and having kids bit later on.

Cost is also a hell of an effective birth control pill. Health care, education and all other factors add up to a fortune. I think young people today have fewer illusions about parenthood. I waited til after college before seriously dating any women and wound up never having any kids of my own. My mother dropped out of her senior year in high school when she got pregnant with me. And she got pregnant with my brother not long after giving birth to me. I remembered how hard my parents had to struggle. My dad joined the Marines so we could have a somewhat better life.

Worldwide, birth rates are way down in developed nations. South Korea has the lowest TFR in the world. People are worried about China and their military power in the future. But their "one child" policy really back-fired. Now they're in a demographic pickle; too many old people and not enough youngsters to keep everything running. The birth rate limit is all gone now, but young adults are still avoiding pregnancy because the cost of raising kids is way too high. They get free health care, but the cost of education, tutors specifically, is very high. Tutors often mean the difference between a good or bad future for the child. China is forecast to start shrinking in population by 1 million people per year in 2025; the decline will accelerate after that.

[Martin Brooks]

I'm not so sure; I'm unaware of any streaming service that has been willing to show full NC-17 content; though their programs are "unrated" I'm unaware of any showing content beyond "hard R" despite what the article above states.

I think Game of Thrones would have probably received an NC17.

[Bobby Henderson]

The Spartacus TV series most definitely would have received a NC-17 rating both for the sexual content and very extreme graphic violence.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It's interesting to see how different rating systems work over the world. One of the most interesting examples to me is the often misunderstood Verhoeven version of Starship Troopers. The MPAA rating for this movie is R. This movie has been rated 12+ in the Netherlands and France and has been shown many times on TV in those countries, completely uncensored around prime time. Whereas in Germany, this movie originally received an 18+ rating and has only been shown on TV late at night and with some violent scenes being cut. A few years ago, the movie was re-rated and now has a 16+ rating in Germany, I wonder what happened...

Much like indicated before, to me, it feels like the MPAA values nudity and sexual content much stronger than actual violence on display. It also doesn't really seem to differ between comedic violence and violence depicted as real.

[Bobby Henderson]

Cussing and bare titties. The MPAA doesn't like those very much. They'll get your movie an R-rating in a heartbeat. Bloody violence is more negotiable.

[Mike Blakesley]

There are PG-rated movies that show people having sex, people talking about sex, people talking about having sex, or people having just had sex. What gets you the R rating is the genitals, especially those below the belt. Show a few bits of genitalia, that's an R-rating. Show a full on genital area for a long time and/or in a sexual situation, that's an NC-17.

I don't know why they don't just do away with the numbers and "vague" lettering and just assign a few more descriptive letters indicating the content.

L=Language
V=Violence
N=Nudity
S=Sex

They could show the letters in a vertical column and put a "+" after any of these to indicate extremes. So if a movie had some language and violence but was explicitly sexy, it could be rated:

L
V
S+

The fewer letters on a movie, the more kid-friendly it would be.

[Jon Dent]

But Mike, that requires parents to put too much thought into it.

*sarcasm off*

Although they do give a rundown of the content now (Strong Violence, Graphic Nudity ,etc...), but it's still a little vague at times.

Back to the topic, I don't think it makes sense that they are trying to starve theaters out completely. Streaming revenue can't quite pay off that blockbuster that cost $300 million to make.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The Dutch system starts with a basic icon with the actual age classification and then adds icons to motivate the classification. No system is perfect, but it's pretty well thought-out and works pretty well:



I've seen a Canadian rating system once, that also added some one-word descriptions alongside the age restriction, to motivate the classification.

[Frank Cox]

The BC Film Classification system (which is also used in Saskatchewan) has descriptions like: "PG Violence, may frighten young children" or "18A Explicit violence, coarse language" and so on.

There's a classification report that's made up for each movie when it's classified that enumerates the reasons for each classification. For example, one recent movie was classified "PG Violence, coarse language" and the classification report says "Several scenes of violence depicting injury, self-harm, weapons and/or physical assault; Approximately 11 instances of coarse and/or sexual language." Yes, they actually include a count of coarse language and "fisticuffs" (gotta love that word) and apparently somehow base their classification on that.