This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006)

★★
The Motion Picture Association of America (M.P.A.A.)* has long been a thorn in the side of film critics, fans and independent filmmakers for decades. Its mission is to offer a voluntary rating system to help parents determine whether a movie is suitable for their children to watch. The organization sees itself as a guide to help with these decisions, but from the outside, the organization is a censorship arm of the big studios and theater owners that applies different standards to mainstream releases and smaller productions. Screeners for the M.P.A.A. view similar content in movies and grade them inconsistently, so that an oral sex scene in one movie (Single White Female) will appear in an R-rated production while a similar scene in Boys Don't Cry between women will contribute to an NC-17 rating. Kirby Dick's documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated explores this curious process by attempting to uncover who these screeners are and who backs them.

Kirby Dick interviews many directors behind the movies that received this prohibitive rating. I say prohibitive because the major theater chains don't play movies rated NC-17, and the big video stores Blockbuster and Hollywood Video had a policy of not stocking these films on their shelves unless they received an R-rated cut. I studied the origins of the NC-17 rating for a presentation I gave in a 1996 college speech class. The X rating had fallen out of favor because it was not copyrighted, allowing porn hustlers to slap their sleaze reels with X and XXX, thereby sullying a rating that was given to Last Tango in Paris and Midnight Cowboy. As a result, writers and directors couldn't realize the fullest extent of their vision without tap dancing around the M.P.A.A.'s guidelines to get an R rating and avoid the tainted X. NC-17 was the result—a copyrighted rating that was supposed to allow more freedom for filmmakers to work unencumbered.

A happy ending, right? Not according to Kirby Dick and his interview subjects, who see the rating as a roadblock to bigger distribution. Every filmmaker dreams of getting his or her project out there in front of as many people as possible. Since the NC-17 equals adults only, the audience for films rated as such diminishes. This is a fascinating topic that deserves to be explored. The M.P.A.A. has never been consistent, and at times it has been downright hypocritical. Scary Movie (2000) in its final form is rated R. Comedy or not, it is so raunchy it makes one wonder what in the world was cut out to settle for an R. Piranha 3-D (2010) absolutely should have been rated NC-17. That was one of the most graphically violent movies I've ever watched in a theater. This is not a commentary on their quality, nor is this a way to disparage the NC-17 rating. This should have worked. Good movies like Henry & June and Bad Lieutenant were among the first to carry the rating, but the big chains weren't convinced of their profitability.

Kirby Dick hires a private investigator to uncover the identities of the M.P.A.A. screeners. They not only stake out the organization's headquarters, but they follow possible leads to lunch and go through their trash. Intercut with these scenes are conversations with directors Wayne Kramer (The Cooler), Matt Stone (Team America: World Police), Jamie Babbit (But I'm a Cheerleader) and others. They all give informative and engaging interviews as they discuss their projects and their experience with dealing with the rating process. Sometimes they're on the mark. Kramer and star Maria Bello discuss her love scene with William H. Macy and place it in its proper context. I appreciate this. There will always be a place for adult stories told to adult audiences. Director Michael Tucker's war documentary Gunner Palace won an appeal to get a PG-13 rating for authentically capturing the reality of war and the daily grind that soldiers face. Tucker discusses his experience amidst the larger issue of war movies as entertainment and how his movie was brutally honest about what happens on the ground.

Kirby Dick sees something else afoot. Beyond the desire to make money is a mysterious entity that censors content due to the supposed conservative nature of M.P.A.A. screeners. This is where Kirby goes wrong, as he tries to weave a web of conspiracy that punishes small movies for trying to tell adult stories. He correctly points out the inconsistent nature of screener qualifications (one guy has grown children when screeners are sold to the public as actively raising children), but he also wants to position the M.P.A.A. as a right-wing establishment driven by right-wing ideology. The biggest giveaway is an interview with Bingham Ray of October Films. Ray calls the organization—wait for it—fascist, which is a slur commonly used by people who have no idea what actual fascism is but want to deliver cheap insults. He then likens the M.P.A.A.'s operation to that of a "secret police," a description that bears a stronger resemblance to communist East Germany's Stasi.

If the documentary had limited itself to these directors and the challenges they faced when seeking ratings, then this could have been a worthy bit of evidence in the overall body of evidence that the M.P.A.A. needs reform. There's definitely room for improvement. The R rating has become so bloated with movies containing outrageous content that Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2009) qualified for the rating while Trey Parker's (somewhat) tamer Orgazmo (1998) got NC-17. They are both comedies. They both involve the porn industry. Smith's movie featured full frontal nudity. Parker's movie did not. I didn't keep track, but Smith's movie probably had more swearing. I liked it, but it is a comedy for adults. Granted, This Film is Not Yet Rated came out in 2006 and couldn't compare these two as I just did, but it does compare masturbation scenes in American Beauty (featured a man) and But I'm a Cheerleader (featured a woman). The former is a black comedy. The latter is a whimsical comedy. The former had violence and topless scenes with Thora Birch and Mena Suvari. The latter contained no violence or nudity.

The latter's theme did revolve around homosexuality, so Dick's hypothesis that the M.P.A.A. is motived by right-wing values appears true on the surface, but look again. He plainly draws a link between the M.P.A.A. and major film studio and theater chain execs. You think these all these people are on the right? Hollywood is staunchly left-leaning. Nearly everyone from the top down supports the Democrat Party. M.P.A.A. president Jack Valenti worked for Lyndon Baines Johnson. This was not a rabbit role worth exploring. For what it's worth, the 1999 film Trick, which sympathetically featured a drag queen supporting character and ended with two men kissing, got an R rating. Maybe stuff was edited out, but what's left on screen is certainly not one would expect to pass through a supposed right-wing organization favorably.

Mary Harron (director of American Psycho) dismisses what she sees as the M.P.A.A.'s fear that unleashed sexuality would be harmful to the public at large. The possible long term effects on the population will inevitably guide any organization that is examining and ranking products meant for public consumption. Television, the music industry, video games and pharmaceutical drugs all have their respective screening bodies, and there will always be disagreement on what should be the correct criteria. You can’t satisfy everyone. That said, anthropologist John Unwin studied the downfall of several civilizations due to sexual licentiousness, and indeed as I write these words in 2023, sexual licentiousness has become a stain on our national fabric. While I don't believe hard-R-rated movies like Basic Instinct are responsible for this (especially since the erotic thriller is no longer popular), I do believe Harron and others in her profession shouldn't be so blasé about the effects of sexual imagery.

Dick submitted This Film is Not Yet Rated for a rating and inevitably got an NC-17. The documentary features lots of scenes cut from other movies. Matt Stone reveals that the puppet sex scene in Team America was deliberately shot longer with the anticipation that the M.P.A.A. would view the scene as excessive, so he and Matt Stone could cut what they didn’t want in the final version anyway and still get away with an over-the-top sex scene featuring puppets in multiple positions. Stories like this make This Film is Not Yet Rated worth watching. What I didn’t appreciate was the idea that the M.P.A.A. is a right-wing fascist organization. Dick uncovers the identity of one screener who is a republican. So what? He doesn’t reveal everyone’s party affiliation, so for all we know there are democrats that he chose not to reveal. This sort of trickery has no place here.

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* The organization changed its name to the Motion Picture Association (M.P.A.) in 2019, but for the purposes of this review, the former name is used.