#1
Posted: 1/18/06 at 1:59pm
A great article I found in the New York Times, about a fascinating new documentary that examines the Motion Picture Association of America and their rating practices. Snippets from the article, link below:
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Director pals told him what he suspected already: the secretive, too-powerful Motion Picture Association of America was hammering independent filmmakers with tough ratings while letting the major studios off easy. You couldn't reason with the ratings board, the indies bleated; it wouldn't even let you argue, on appeal, that your new movie was tamer than a film that got an R or a PG-13 rating the year before.
The ratings board's anonymous members had few clear standards for evaluating movies, his indie friends whispered. Small wonder, they griped, that movies with gay sex scenes, or even lingering female orgasms - like scenes cut from Kimberly Peirce's "Boys Don't Cry" and "The Cooler" by Wayne Kramer - were verboten, while gore fests and straight-sex scenes seldom got as much of a reaction out of the board.
[...]
Finally, Mr. Dick, whose last documentary, "Twist of Faith," was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004, also reveals, somewhat ominously, that representatives from the Roman Catholic Church and from the National Council of Churches sit in on the appeals process.
Again, Ms. Bernards, the ratings board spokeswoman, said there was a simple explanation. Years ago, she said, Catholics and Protestants questioned the appeals process's integrity. "So we invited them to observe, and ever since then they have," she said. "No one else has asked."
Rating (and Finding) the Movie Raters
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Director pals told him what he suspected already: the secretive, too-powerful Motion Picture Association of America was hammering independent filmmakers with tough ratings while letting the major studios off easy. You couldn't reason with the ratings board, the indies bleated; it wouldn't even let you argue, on appeal, that your new movie was tamer than a film that got an R or a PG-13 rating the year before.
The ratings board's anonymous members had few clear standards for evaluating movies, his indie friends whispered. Small wonder, they griped, that movies with gay sex scenes, or even lingering female orgasms - like scenes cut from Kimberly Peirce's "Boys Don't Cry" and "The Cooler" by Wayne Kramer - were verboten, while gore fests and straight-sex scenes seldom got as much of a reaction out of the board.
[...]
Finally, Mr. Dick, whose last documentary, "Twist of Faith," was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004, also reveals, somewhat ominously, that representatives from the Roman Catholic Church and from the National Council of Churches sit in on the appeals process.
Again, Ms. Bernards, the ratings board spokeswoman, said there was a simple explanation. Years ago, she said, Catholics and Protestants questioned the appeals process's integrity. "So we invited them to observe, and ever since then they have," she said. "No one else has asked."
Rating (and Finding) the Movie Raters
BlueWizard's blog: The Rambling Corner
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