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MPAA Gives Film About Ratings an NC-17 Rating
jtcm writes "An original documentary by Kirby Dick, called "This Film is Not Yet Rated" has been assigned an NC-17 rating by the MPAA. The film explores the MPAA's own film rating system and "its profound effect on American culture." The NC-17 rating was given due to "some graphic sexual content" and will likely limit the movie's distribution, as many theater chains will not show NC-17 movies. Among the filmmakers speaking openly in the movie are two of my personal favorites, Kevin Smith and Matt Stone. For those who are eager to view this exposé, fear not. The Independent Film Channel (IFC) will present the film uncensored and uninterrupted."
I recall reading that some theaters won't show NC-17s because local papers won't carry advertisements for NC-17 movies.
Does that mean a breast through a frosted glass door of a shower? If that same door was not frosted, but was steamy? How about not steamy and clear? Does the level of zoom matter? What if there was no door? Or does the breast need to be engaged in some activity for it to be "graphic?"
You don't even know what the 'graphic' content is in the movie. Maybe they played a 30 second clip of some random porn film? But who cares. Its just a rating by a private group. Yes, it does mean that most movie theaters will not play it (which is a self-enacted policy as opposed to the law). However I don't think its a big deal since documentaries like this usually play at indie-theaters anyway.
Like the Oscars being sued when the most popular documentary in history wasn't nominated for a single thing, the courts said all that movie stuff is a private industry, and they can do whatever they want and you can't do anything about it. The courts are real good about protecting Goliath from David, as if Goliath needed any more help...
That was a good thing...right? Because having a court-ordered Oscar nomination would have been bad..right? RIGHT????
premiere at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and air on IFC in Fall 2006
Article on AICN at http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=21980
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What do you expect of a nation that can't even properly spell theatre or colour? Our society has been hijacked by the mob -- an illiterate puritan mob.
News Flash: Godzilla hates infrastructure.
Midnight Cowboy was rated X when it came out.
"Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" and "Bad Education" got an NC-17. I'm personally not the biggest Almodovar fan, but he is considered a world class director. He's also probably the best example of someone who isn't really trying to shock the audience.
Bad Lieutenant has some heavy "catholic" themes, although most people dismiss it a s a shock movie.
We actually have a few more rating you skipped over there.
Uc - Universal (children) - Films specifically aimed at pre-school children.
U - Universal - Suitable for all.
PG - Parental Guidance - Might have some themes that might upset some children - but generally fine for all.
12A (cinema)/ 12 (video) - Must be over 12 to watch it.(I think 12 used to be a guide, and then 12A was the legally enforcable one)
15 - Must be over 15
18 - Must be over 18
R18 - Restricted 18 - Can only be purchased from certain outlets - it's porn.
The British system still has the weird bias towards violence over smut - but it's got a lot better over the last few years (BBFC replaced their chair with a slightly more enlightened chap).
A few years back R18 didn't exist - hardcore was either not available, or heavily cut. Nowadays pretty much everything can be released with a few notable exceptions (violence, non-consensual stuff etc).
www.bbfc.co.uk has a nice little breakdown of the above rules. Nice little note on the R18 page "These guidelines make no distinction between heterosexual and homosexual activity."
Good.
I think the scene your refering to went something like this. Jay was talking to a hooker. Hooker:I can be as nasty as you want me to be Jay: Ok well i'm ramming you in the ass while you go down on a midget. My friend bob is jerking off into a cup and you... Hooker: That's to nasty for me I quit.
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Originally the MPAA labeled movies G, GP (later changed to PG), R and X. There was a Catholic organization that rated films as well, labeling them with various levels of "reservation," and giving some an O for "offensive," that meant catholics weren't supposed to watch them. At one time, being labeled O meant a lot of people were not going to see your movie.
Indiana Jones III in 1984 got a new PG-13 rating to create something that sounded edgier than PG but not quite R, something that older teens could be expected to watch. It featured the scene where the voodoo guy rips out a beating heart from a living person and bites it.
Later, filmmakers asked for a renamed rating for "mature" subjects that were considered "more than R" to disassociate mature with the porn stigma attached to "X Rated"
So to accommodate mature, non porn films, the MPAA re-branded the X rating as NC-17, and some non-porn feature films actually got released as NC-17. Very few "X rated" mainstream films that had ever been released before. The X rating didn't necessarily mean sex and nudity, but in reality it generally did; when people heard X they associated it with hardcore porn. Before NC-17, films getting an X rating that weren't porn simply edited things down to get an R rating.
Porn theaters had long done the opposite: they marketed their content (much of which was not really feature length movies, but just sex, and so not even officially ever "rated") as "Triple XXX!!!" There is no such thing as an XXX rating. There is no such thing as an XXX rating. There is no such thing as an XXX rating. That sink in yet?
Any theater choosing to show NC-17 movies would be risking the taint of being labeled a porn-house, likely incur the wrath and bad publicity of morality/family interest/religious groups, and for all that trouble only show limited run movies with a narrow appeal. How would that be a good business decision?
Theaters already are unlikely to show independent movies without guaranteed draws that deliver profits efficiently. If you are puzzled as to why a theater, and particularly a huge chain designed to make money fastest, would not (or rarely ever) show NC-17 rated films, then you must also be wondering why WalMart doesn't sell latex suits, dildoes and, buttfucking slings.
It's the fascist organization that decided to develop a voluntary system of television ratings before the government established its own censor office to do that for them. While it's certainly not a good thing, it would have been a lot worse if the government took it over.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
The general principle is that, on bases in the US, civilian laws (local, state, and federal) apply as long as they don't conflict with military law or regulation. So on Minot AFB in North Dakota, where I spent much of my tour, AF personnel could be prosecuted by civilian authorities for violating ND law, on or off base, as long as there wasn't a military law or regulation saying their actions were okay -- such as, e.g., the regulation allowing the base commander to allow people under 21 to drink; for a more extreme example, the base cops and some flightline personnel could shoot to kill anyone who even looked like they were threatening the security of the nuclear weapons stores, which is behavior that is generally illegal on routine civilian guard duty.
... And civilians who committed crimes on base had to be turned over to civilian authorities; the base cops could arrest them, but they weren't subject to military law, and the base didn't have any civilian courts.
In reality, it was very rare for active-duty personnel to be prosecuted by civilian authorities for anything they did on base, since almost everything that's a crime under civilian law is also a crime under military law with much harsher penalties, but theoretically it could happen; off base, it was actually pretty common, particularly when it came to drinking and fighting
Overseas it's even more complicated. In friendly countries, such as the UK, where I also spent a fair amount of time, there's an agreement between the US and the host country called a SOFA, or Status Of Forces Agreement, which spells out the degree to which service personnel are or are not subject to local laws. And I do recall a case in which a guy who smuggled an Iraqi AK-47 back from Desert Storm was prosecuted by the British authorities for violation of their firearms laws, which are much stronger than those either in civilian US law or under the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice). However, it's worth noting that he was arrested by a British cop while trying to sell the weapon off-base; and again, while theoretically the AF could have turned him over to the British authorities for prosecution even if he'd never taken it off-base, they probably wouldn't have.
In unfriendly countries, of course, only military laws apply; no one is going to argue that Cuban law applies at Guantanamo Bay! (Or any other kind of law, apparently, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.)
The usual IANA(M)L disclaimers apply: I had to know something about military law in my roles both as a medic and as an NCO, but all this is off the top of my head, and it was a while ago. But as I remember it all, that's pretty much the way it worked.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.