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Review #308 of 365
Movie Review of This Film is Not Yet Rated(2006) [NR] 97 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $9.50
Where Viewed: Regency Tamarac Square, Denver, CO
When 1st Seen: 15 November 2006
Time: 9:30 p.m.
Film's Official Website
DVD Release Date: unscheduled
Directed by: Kirby Dick (Twist of Faith)
Written by: Kirby Dick (Guy), Eddie Schmidt, and Matt Patterson (Obey the Signs... and Live!)
Featured Cast (Where You Might Remember Him/Her From):
Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream-director) • Jamie Babbit (The Quiet-director) • Maria Bello (Flicka) • Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter-director) • Mary Harron (The Notorious Bettie Page-director) • Wayne Kramer (Running Scared-director) • Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry-director) • Kevin Smith (Clerks II-director) • Matt Stone (Team America: World Police-writer) • Michael Tucker (Gunner Palace-director) • John Waters (A Dirty Shame-director)
Click for 'Review Lite' [a 150-word or less review of this film]
A director taking it to the Motion Picture Association of America—you know, the organization that works to stop movie piracy AND rates all films released in the United States, voluntarily of course, as either [G], [PG], [PG-13], [R], or [NC-17]? Well, this doesn't sound that smart, especially if what he and the other directors, big names like Darren Aronofsky, Mary Harron, Wayne Kramer, Kimberly Peirce, Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, and John Waters say is true, the MPAA has the power to make or break a movie in the United States. Still, Mr. Dick is undeterred in his zeal to enlighten USA movie audiences to not only how the MPAA works, but who the members are, along with a few alleged untruths spoken by the people who govern the organization. The identities of the members of the panel who actually rate all submitted films are as closely guarded as that of world class super heroes. You'd think these people were the Justice League. While the documentary gets off to a good start and is full of juicy details, including but not limited to the identity of all of the panel members and the appeals board, the zeal to reveal these people becomes the focus of the film which fails to explore two other obvious aspects of the MPAA that would have elevated the film to a state of far greater value: the source of funding for the MPAA is never revealed and the lack of enforcement of the ratings at the theatres goes unnoticed.
"…unravels quickly into an extended PowerPoint® presentation on the secret identities of the MPAA raters…"
To begin then, the best part of the film, frankly, is the interviews with the directors whose films have been slapped with NC-17 ratings and either had to be edited (which basically amounts to being censored) at the request of movie studios, released under the NC-17 rating which most financial people illogically equate to a poison pill at the box office and the retail stores—Wal-mart, for example, will not carry NC-17 films, or released as NR-not rated with a similar backlash to the NC-17. Most of the time, the directors are candid and frank about the impact the MPAA ratings have had on their film. Though, they often spend too much time talking about disparity in the ratings. Why does one film with XYZ get an R, but mind with PDQ got an NC-17. The good points they make, and ones that the MPAA should heed, is that the MPAA has allowed, and anyone who sees a lot of films knows this is a fact, far more violence into films at lower ratings than they do any form or mention of sex. Everyone from child psychologist to human behaviorists to law enforcement agencies agrees that the impact of extreme violence on children is far worse than the impact of seeing sexual acts. And, even if it were not true, or it were a false interpretation because the MPAA permits so little sex, the impact of it is not fully known, I doubt many people would disagree they'd rather younger people commit acts of sex with each other than acts of violence? Sure, we need not make a choice, we could have both, but why would the MPAA flood our market with films of violence with a trickle of sex rather than the other way around or neither? This isn't logical. In any case, the argument of "his film had X and only got an R while mine had Y and got an NC-17" runs a bit thin after a while because it boils down to directors trying to convince an unfriendly audience that kids should be allowed to see certain things that maybe a lot of parents and guardians simply don't think their kids need to see regardless of what they may have seen in the past in other movies. It's the two wrongs don't make a right argument. It's also not the right argument in the end on this point as I'll show in a moment.
Beyond these candid interviews with some of the more controversial directors of the past decade, the bulk of the film is focuses on a private detective, Becky Altringer, that Kirby Dick hires to reveal the identity of the super secret panel of raters at the MPAA. A few scenes regarding her personal life are completely meaningless to the film as is an nearly exhaustive waste of time watching her stake out the exit of the MPAA HQ writing down license plate numbers of every car that exits so that she run these plate numbers and ultimately discover the identity of the people. Indeed, some of this is patently mind-numbing to watch. Mr. Dick seems to have lost track a bit here with his film. Is this a film about how one would use a P.I. to discover secret info, or the information itself? Well, if one uses time in the film devoted to a subject as a way to gauge this director's intent, you would have to conclude the former because the actual time given to the revelation of the identities is about 30 seconds of total footages vs. 20-30-40 minutes not sure devoted to finding them. As further proof of misdirection and loss of focus here for the film, I offer this point. Ok, so the big deal is that these people are all secret. And this makes directors upset because they want to face their accusers, and they want to know who they are. Ok, so once Kirby Dick identified them, then what? Did he take this list of names and faces back to any one of the people he interviews and ask them, "So, do you feel better know? Here's the list?" No, he didn't do that. At least, if he did, he chose not to include it in the film. Which either means he didn't do it, or their response were not film worthy. Which, I would guess, they wouldn't be because actually, so what? So what? If I directed a film that got an NC-17, what would knowing the names and identities of the raters do for me? The MPAA says the names are secret to prevent outside influence. Well, now that I know their names, am I going to write them personal letters of appeal? Am I going to try to bump into them in the grocery store and say, "Gee, I think you were too harsh on my film?" No, no director is going to do either of those two things. So actually, it seems, that the complaint that the panel was secret really wasn't the real complaint, but rather a ruse cooked up to shoot holes in the MPAA and hopefully bring them down. I'm not disagreeing that they might be too powerful, make a lot of mistakes, rate films arbitrarily, favor studio films vs. independents, censor films, and use faulty logic in their ratings about what I'd really want my offspring to view or not view, but whether the panelists' names are secret or not makes no difference. In the end, therefore, This Film is Not Yet Rated unravels quickly into an extended PowerPoint® presentation on the secret identities of the MPAA raters and the Appeal Board members—nearly all of whom were movie theatre chain big wigs.
So, what might Mr. Dick have done instead of finding the identities of the raters to really make his film work. And, I apologize, because some people don't think it's the job of a critic to make suggestions as to what would have made a documentary better. I disagree. I think that is the job of a critic of a documentary. You cannot critique the interviewees—oh, Mr. XYZ's accent was off, etc. They are the real people. You cannot critique the information revealed, it's supposed to be factual. So, what else can you critique but not for the strands followed. From my perspective, Mr. Dick, and if I were Lincoln-Douglas debating him in high school, the two points I'd raise against his film is that he misses two much more relevant and obvious avenues to go after the MPAA. If your aim is to decrease their power, get them to standardize their system, make the process more transparent, and create a rating system in the USA that actually does some good, then here is where he might have gone with more meaningful results.
First, he might have examined who pays for the MPAA? Does each director/producer have to submit a check to the MPAA to get their movie evaluated? If so, why don't all the independent directors simply agree not to pay for this service? Then, at least, all independent films would be unified in their fight against the MPAA. This would make the studios look pretty ridiculous. Or is the MPAA funded by other sources like the studios themselves paying some sort of membership fees? This would have been pretty easy to find out and would have shed a lot more light on the MPAA.
Second, and this is the big one, Mr. Dick totally missed the boat on the other side of the river. So what if a movie gets an NC-17 or an R or a PG-13 if the movie theaters don't regulate admission of kids into the various auditoriums in the cinema. I've been to over 300 movies this year in theaters. I can assure you that of the hundred+ R-rated movies I've been in, there were plenty of kids present. And by kids I don't just mean 15 year olds, I mean little kids. And yeah, some were with their parents. Yes. I am constantly amazed to see parents, usually younger parents who barely look like they've reach 25 years old, bringing their little kids of 3, 4, and 5 to see movies like The Departed. Well, buying a ticket for a kid to an R-rated movie is cheaper than paying for a babysitter, right? Meanwhile, I've watched 12 and 13-year old kids wave buy to mini-van driving-mom in the parking lot saying, "I hope you enjoy How to Eat Fried Worms, you loved the book as a kid," who then all scurry up to the window for tix to Fried Worms, who then lo and behold are sitting three rows ahead of me to see Snakes on a Plane—which was, by the way, properly rated R, in my opinion. But the theatre did nothing to ensure that the kids who bought tix to How to Eat Fried Worms did not then go into the Snakes on a Plane auditorium. This happens literally all the time. I couldn't even count the number of kids in Saw III or Beerfest. So, this presents two problems. First, the purpose of the MPAA ratings at theatres is pointless if parents cannot trust that their kids are going to the movies they have selected. Second, How to Eat Fried Worms was making a lot of money when really, that money was owed to Snakes on a Plane. The irony here is, and someone should do a study on this, but Hollywood really thinks that its family and animated movies are doing so well they keep making tons of them, but the reality may well be that a decent percentage of those tickets are purchased by kids under 17 to gain entrance to see rated-R movies! Now, I submit that this would have been an incredibly much more enlightening aspect of the film that what's in it. How about some interviews with kids about why they do this? Why they violate the trust of their parents, basically lying and cheating the system not even realizing probably that they are ripping off every single person from the actors to the writer to the stuntpersons to the dolly grips involved in the making of the film they are actually seeing while simultaneously inflating the box office of the films they are not seeing. How about some private detectives hired to count the number of kids in Rated-R film auditoriums over a few weekends with some candid interviews or surveys asking how many actually had parental permission to see the film and how the theatres knew the permission was granted? Did the kid bring a letter from home? So, for all the hubbabaloo over the unfair and super secret MPAA, it's pretty certain that it doesn't serve the purpose at the viewer end at all. Parents and guardians may appreciate the info, but what good does it do if they don't walk their kid into the Rated-G auditorium and sit outside the door until the movie is over? Back in the day when each theatre showed only one film, when was that like 1965?, it might have made sense because it might have been too far for a kid to walk to the other theatre from where he was dropped off, but now? As for whether Wal-mart will carry NC-17 films or sell rated-R movies to kids, again, that is absolutely irrelevant because I've yet to meet a kid that had cable at home that hadn't watched more rated-R movies by the time he was 13 than I had by the time I was 25. It's just different now, and parental/guardian oversight is more porous on average than it was long before the USA became a two-parents-must-work-for-family-to-survive nation. How exactly are one-parent families supposed to monitor what their kids watch? And even if they v-chip their tv and don't but any rated-R DVDs, what kid doesn't know a kid that has unblocked tv and rated-R DVDs at their house? So, it seems that if the point of these ratings is to protect kids, it doesn't work. Does that mean we should allow just an anything goes approach to all films made and have no rating system? No. It just means that, once again, USA culture has done a great job of lulling itself into a false sense of reality. With a puritanical MPAA working to keep sex out of rated-R movies but allowing extreme violence on a routine basis into rated-R films and rated PG-13 films, parents and guardians who not only don't monitor what their kids watch, are even taking them to see these films themselves; and movie theatres who claim ignorance to the whole ticket buying scheme, however, it would seem that some other systems need to be put in place if the goal really is to protect kids from seeing adult-oriented films.
Beyond these candid interviews with some of the more controversial directors of the past decade, the bulk of the film is focuses on a private detective, Becky Altringer, that Kirby Dick hires to reveal the identity of the super secret panel of raters at the MPAA. A few scenes regarding her personal life are completely meaningless to the film as is an nearly exhaustive waste of time watching her stake out the exit of the MPAA HQ writing down license plate numbers of every car that exits so that she run these plate numbers and ultimately discover the identity of the people. Indeed, some of this is patently mind-numbing to watch. Mr. Dick seems to have lost track a bit here with his film. Is this a film about how one would use a P.I. to discover secret info, or the information itself? Well, if one uses time in the film devoted to a subject as a way to gauge this director's intent, you would have to conclude the former because the actual time given to the revelation of the identities is about 30 seconds of total footages vs. 20-30-40 minutes not sure devoted to finding them. As further proof of misdirection and loss of focus here for the film, I offer this point. Ok, so the big deal is that these people are all secret. And this makes directors upset because they want to face their accusers, and they want to know who they are. Ok, so once Kirby Dick identified them, then what? Did he take this list of names and faces back to any one of the people he interviews and ask them, "So, do you feel better know? Here's the list?" No, he didn't do that. At least, if he did, he chose not to include it in the film. Which either means he didn't do it, or their response were not film worthy. Which, I would guess, they wouldn't be because actually, so what? So what? If I directed a film that got an NC-17, what would knowing the names and identities of the raters do for me? The MPAA says the names are secret to prevent outside influence. Well, now that I know their names, am I going to write them personal letters of appeal? Am I going to try to bump into them in the grocery store and say, "Gee, I think you were too harsh on my film?" No, no director is going to do either of those two things. So actually, it seems, that the complaint that the panel was secret really wasn't the real complaint, but rather a ruse cooked up to shoot holes in the MPAA and hopefully bring them down. I'm not disagreeing that they might be too powerful, make a lot of mistakes, rate films arbitrarily, favor studio films vs. independents, censor films, and use faulty logic in their ratings about what I'd really want my offspring to view or not view, but whether the panelists' names are secret or not makes no difference. In the end, therefore, This Film is Not Yet Rated unravels quickly into an extended PowerPoint® presentation on the secret identities of the MPAA raters and the Appeal Board members—nearly all of whom were movie theatre chain big wigs.
So, what might Mr. Dick have done instead of finding the identities of the raters to really make his film work. And, I apologize, because some people don't think it's the job of a critic to make suggestions as to what would have made a documentary better. I disagree. I think that is the job of a critic of a documentary. You cannot critique the interviewees—oh, Mr. XYZ's accent was off, etc. They are the real people. You cannot critique the information revealed, it's supposed to be factual. So, what else can you critique but not for the strands followed. From my perspective, Mr. Dick, and if I were Lincoln-Douglas debating him in high school, the two points I'd raise against his film is that he misses two much more relevant and obvious avenues to go after the MPAA. If your aim is to decrease their power, get them to standardize their system, make the process more transparent, and create a rating system in the USA that actually does some good, then here is where he might have gone with more meaningful results.
First, he might have examined who pays for the MPAA? Does each director/producer have to submit a check to the MPAA to get their movie evaluated? If so, why don't all the independent directors simply agree not to pay for this service? Then, at least, all independent films would be unified in their fight against the MPAA. This would make the studios look pretty ridiculous. Or is the MPAA funded by other sources like the studios themselves paying some sort of membership fees? This would have been pretty easy to find out and would have shed a lot more light on the MPAA.
Second, and this is the big one, Mr. Dick totally missed the boat on the other side of the river. So what if a movie gets an NC-17 or an R or a PG-13 if the movie theaters don't regulate admission of kids into the various auditoriums in the cinema. I've been to over 300 movies this year in theaters. I can assure you that of the hundred+ R-rated movies I've been in, there were plenty of kids present. And by kids I don't just mean 15 year olds, I mean little kids. And yeah, some were with their parents. Yes. I am constantly amazed to see parents, usually younger parents who barely look like they've reach 25 years old, bringing their little kids of 3, 4, and 5 to see movies like The Departed. Well, buying a ticket for a kid to an R-rated movie is cheaper than paying for a babysitter, right? Meanwhile, I've watched 12 and 13-year old kids wave buy to mini-van driving-mom in the parking lot saying, "I hope you enjoy How to Eat Fried Worms, you loved the book as a kid," who then all scurry up to the window for tix to Fried Worms, who then lo and behold are sitting three rows ahead of me to see Snakes on a Plane—which was, by the way, properly rated R, in my opinion. But the theatre did nothing to ensure that the kids who bought tix to How to Eat Fried Worms did not then go into the Snakes on a Plane auditorium. This happens literally all the time. I couldn't even count the number of kids in Saw III or Beerfest. So, this presents two problems. First, the purpose of the MPAA ratings at theatres is pointless if parents cannot trust that their kids are going to the movies they have selected. Second, How to Eat Fried Worms was making a lot of money when really, that money was owed to Snakes on a Plane. The irony here is, and someone should do a study on this, but Hollywood really thinks that its family and animated movies are doing so well they keep making tons of them, but the reality may well be that a decent percentage of those tickets are purchased by kids under 17 to gain entrance to see rated-R movies! Now, I submit that this would have been an incredibly much more enlightening aspect of the film that what's in it. How about some interviews with kids about why they do this? Why they violate the trust of their parents, basically lying and cheating the system not even realizing probably that they are ripping off every single person from the actors to the writer to the stuntpersons to the dolly grips involved in the making of the film they are actually seeing while simultaneously inflating the box office of the films they are not seeing. How about some private detectives hired to count the number of kids in Rated-R film auditoriums over a few weekends with some candid interviews or surveys asking how many actually had parental permission to see the film and how the theatres knew the permission was granted? Did the kid bring a letter from home? So, for all the hubbabaloo over the unfair and super secret MPAA, it's pretty certain that it doesn't serve the purpose at the viewer end at all. Parents and guardians may appreciate the info, but what good does it do if they don't walk their kid into the Rated-G auditorium and sit outside the door until the movie is over? Back in the day when each theatre showed only one film, when was that like 1965?, it might have made sense because it might have been too far for a kid to walk to the other theatre from where he was dropped off, but now? As for whether Wal-mart will carry NC-17 films or sell rated-R movies to kids, again, that is absolutely irrelevant because I've yet to meet a kid that had cable at home that hadn't watched more rated-R movies by the time he was 13 than I had by the time I was 25. It's just different now, and parental/guardian oversight is more porous on average than it was long before the USA became a two-parents-must-work-for-family-to-survive nation. How exactly are one-parent families supposed to monitor what their kids watch? And even if they v-chip their tv and don't but any rated-R DVDs, what kid doesn't know a kid that has unblocked tv and rated-R DVDs at their house? So, it seems that if the point of these ratings is to protect kids, it doesn't work. Does that mean we should allow just an anything goes approach to all films made and have no rating system? No. It just means that, once again, USA culture has done a great job of lulling itself into a false sense of reality. With a puritanical MPAA working to keep sex out of rated-R movies but allowing extreme violence on a routine basis into rated-R films and rated PG-13 films, parents and guardians who not only don't monitor what their kids watch, are even taking them to see these films themselves; and movie theatres who claim ignorance to the whole ticket buying scheme, however, it would seem that some other systems need to be put in place if the goal really is to protect kids from seeing adult-oriented films.
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Other Projects Featuring This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006)
Featured Participants
Darren Aronofsky
• Jamie Babbit• Maria BelloAtom Egoyan
• Mary Harron• Wayne KramerKimberly Peirce
• Kevin Smith• Matt StoneMichael Tucker
• John Waters Director
Kirby Dick
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This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006) Review-lite [150-word cap]
A director taking on the Motion Picture Association of America doesn't sound that smart, especially if what he and the other directors, big names like Darren Aronofsky, Mary Harron, and Kimberly Peirce, say is true, the MPAA has the power to make or break a movie in the United States. Still, Mr. Dick is undeterred in his zeal to reveal the identities of the members of the raters panel. While the documentary gets off to a good start and is full of juicy details, his zeal to reveal these people becomes the focus of the film which fails to explore two obvious aspects of the MPAA that would have proven more significant: the source of funding for the MPAA and the ironic lack of ratings enforcement at the theatres.
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