Michael Moore stalking George Bush. Morgan Spurlock stalking a Big Mac. This year the gonzo documentary they’ll all be talking about is Kirby Dick hunting down and dragging, blinking, into the spotlight of publicity, America’s notoriously anonymous movie censors. This Film is not Yet Rated, to be shown at the Sundance festival of independent films which starts today, is something of a private crusade for Dick, sparked by the complaints from many of his fellow directors that the Motion Picture Association of America was hammering independent film-makers while letting the big studios off easy. The refusal of the independents to cut important but sometimes, graphic scenes from their films, they told him, often meant that the MPAA would slap them with an NC-17 rating, restricting audiences to those 17 years and older — box-office poison for many a movie.
The upshot of it all is that Dick, whose earlier film, Twist of Faith, about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, was nominated for an Oscar, has come up with a wildly entertaining documentary — complete with secret video filming and car chases — that advocates greater transparency in the film-rating world.
In this country the British Board of Film Classification is an independent, non-governmental body whose members are all known to the public. Many of the examiners — who tend to be teachers, psychologists and social workers — operate on a part-time basis only. The MPAA’s Classification and Ratings Administration, on the other hand, is a secret world of full-time members who jealously guard their anonymity.
Film-makers don’t have to submit their brainchildren for classification — film rating is an ostensibly voluntary procedure — but the absence of a rating condemns the picture in the eyes of exhibitors and the mainstream media, where the distributor might want to place an advertisement.
Once a film-maker submits a film to the ratings apparatus, he or she has no choice but to accept the rating as given, or change the film.
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It wasn’t censorship that really annoyed Dick, though. What got him going was the anonymity of it all. So, armed with a budget of $1 million, Dick hired a private investigator named Becky Altringer to help him track down and expose the MPAA’s examiners. For months, Dick and his crew sat outside the MPAA’s offices in Encino, California. They followed employees to lunch and even sifted through their rubbish.
Dick accepts that he has had it in for the MPAA for a long time. He finds odious the notion of a body of anonymous busybodies passing judgment on his work or that of his peers. “It’s astounding,” he says, “how many major film-makers have been caught up in it. I mean world figures, a roll-call of art film-makers of the past 40 years. And the system has hardly moved at all or even responded to criticism. I got to the point where I had to make a film and put this before the public to open up a discussion about how a better rating system could be developed.”
Dick’s big break came when Altringer, using high-powered binoculars to look into the MPAA’s security outhouse, spotted a list of phone extensions tacked to wall. A few phone calls later and she was able to piece together a list of all eight members of the ratings board.
Dick also interviewed and profiled 11 film-makers and shows footage from their censored films, along with excerpts of offending material that was cut from the theatrical release. Among them were Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry — the film that won Hilary Swank her first Oscar — Jamie Babbitt’s But I’m a Cheerleader, John Waters’s A Dirty Shame and Atom Egoyan’s Where The Truth Lies. Some films, such as Mary Harron’s American Psycho, were accused of being too violent, others too foul of language, such as Michael Tucker’s Gunner Palace, about US Marines in Iraq.
“Michael got an R-rating for language,” fumes Dick. “He wanted to show what it’s like out there. What are you supposed to say when someone starts shooting at you? ‘Gosh darnnit’?”
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Many of the films have another element in common: homosexuality. Babbitt is not alone in wondering if the sexual content in her film was being judged more harshly because of the character’s sexual orientation.
Dick presents a compelling argument: that the MPAA is effectively limiting the revenue-generating potential of independently produced films.
Particularly relevant is the issue concerning Gunner Palace. The film’s R rating put it out of reach of young men only a year younger than some of the soldiers depicted in the film — the same kids, Tucker argues in the film, who are being recruited to go out to fight in Iraq. “His target audience was being excluded,” Dick says.
The Sundance premiere of This Film is Not Yet Rated is apt, given that many of the offended film-makers have shown their films at the festival over the years. Apt also because Sundance’s geographic location is entirely contradictory. Presided over by the iconic Robert Redford, the festival is the bedrock of the independent film community in the US and yet it is held in Park City, smack dab in the centre of Utah, the most conservative state in the union.
Conservative or liberal, independent or studio-bound, Dick had a hard time finding people willing to talk about the ratings system, let alone finance a film about it.
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“There was a surprising level of paranoia,” says Dick. “Some film-makers were afraid to speak because they might get a harsher rating on their next film. In terms of funding, we went to a number of people who said they really wanted to help us make the film but who got word from ‘higher up’ not to proceed.” While This Film is Not Yet Rated provides a controversial anchor to proceedings at this year’s Sundance, the festival is marked once again by a tantalising mixture of small budget films and big studio extravaganzas. The festival’s opening night film, Friends with Money, is classic Sundance. The director, Nicole Holofcener, is as indie as they come — her 1996 feature debut Walking and Talking had its premiere there — as are her supporting actresses Catherine Keener, Francis McDormand and Joan Cusack. Her headliner, Jennifer Aniston, though, is definitely not. An ensemble drama, the film follows a quartet of friends, three of whose lives rotate around their well-to-do families while Aniston struggles to keep her head above water. Closing night seems similarly structured: Nick Cassavettes’s Alpha Dog features the Hollywood heavyweights Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone along with Justin Timberlake. But the Sundance habitué Emile Hirsch runs the show in this true-life story of a young drug dealer who became the youngest person to land on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
Sundance also boasts a strong documentary competition. Many consider the cost of the War on Terror and the conflict in Iraq. Patricia Foulkrod’s Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends investigates how the US military trains its soldiers, while in Iraq in Fragments James Longley provides three portraits of contemporary Iraq.
The German film-maker Heidi Specogna’s The Short Life of José Antonio Guiterrez considers the first US soldier to die in the war, a Guatemalan whose family came to America looking for a better life.
“During the 1990s you had independent films that were insular, even navel-gazing,” says Geoffrey Gilmore, the director of Sundance. “It’s changed a great deal. You could argue that it was 9/11 that did it but I think it was already changing at the millennium. The world feels more vulnerable.”
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The Sundance Film Festival begins today at Park City, Utah. http://festival.sundance.org/2006/
Page 2: How film classification works in Britain ()
Choice cuts: how film classification works in Britain
The British Board of Film Classification is an independent body that has classified cinema films, advertisements and trailers since it was set up in 1912.
Statutory powers over film classification remain with local authorities, but the board was introduced to establish uniformity in ratings across the country. It also classifies videos and DVDs and video games with particularly violent or sexual content.
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The board processes around 15,000 submissions each year, of which around 600 are feature films viewed by the board’s 25 examiners before their release in cinemas, at a cost of around £650 per film. At least two examiners then watch the film in cinema conditions — considering among other things the impact of special effects and soundtrack on the likely audience — and recommend a rating.
Examiners are drawn from a range of backgrounds including social work, teaching, probation, journalism, psychology and marketing. They produce a detailed report on each film which is then scrutinised by senior examiners before final approval by the board’s director and the awarding of a certificate and the “black card” which must appear at the beginning of the film.
Most works are passed without any cuts and with little difficulty. However, if trims are necessary before it can be passed distributors are given a list of the cuts.
Distributors can request that a film meets a particular classification, and if examiners decide that the film warrants a higher classification, they can specify cuts. The film may be resubmitted after editing. Around 10 per cent of films are released with ratings higher than those suggested by the distributors.
Councils may still overrule any of the board’s decisions, passing films that have been rejected, banning those that have been passed, and even waiving recommended cuts, instituting new ones, or altering categories for films shown within their own jurisdiction.
DAVID ROSE
Page 3: British and US rating classifications ()
British ratings
U (Universal) For audiences aged four years and over.
PG (Parental Guidance) General viewing, but should not disturb a child aged around eight or older.
12/12A Suitable for 12 years and over. No-one younger than 12 may see a 12A unless accompanied by an adult.
15 Suitable only for 15 years and over.
18 No one younger than 18 may see it.
R18 (Restricted) To be shown only in specially licensed cinemas, or supplied only in licensed sex shops, and to adults of not less than 18 years.
US ratings
G (General Audiences) All ages admitted.
PG (Parental Guidance suggested) Some material may not be suitable for younger children.
PG 13 (Parents strongly cautioned) May be inappropriate for children under 13. Parents should examine first.
R (Restricted) Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. Parents should examine first.
NC-17 (No children under 17 admitted) Designation does not signify that the rated film is obscene or pornographic in terms of sex, language or violence.