Jack Valenti was an Asshole.
Notice I used the word “asshole”, as this denotes opinion, not fact. If you look up a photo of Mr. Valenti, you will see the photo of a tanned, wrinkled old man with white hair and jet black eyebrows, who looks like he could have been a kindly old grandfather instead of the president of the MPAA. You will not see a photo of an ass hole, which is to say you will not see two butt cheeks with a round opening feathered like a chrysanthemum. You will not see a goatse-esq shot of a rather flexible man pulling apart the sides of his anus to uncomfortable distortion, for Mr. Valenti was not, literally, an ass hole. He had a date of birth, a long career history, a public record of his various doings with the DMV, courts, business associates, and a date of death. He was a living, breathing, human being, not an anus, but he did produce bullshit, which is to say the MPAA and their ratings board, CARA.
The MPAA’s big tag line is that they do not censor movies — they simply create a rating, using real ordinary parents, to help parents determine what films their children should see. The problem is that, when a film is slapped with an NC-17 rating, *no* child under the age of 17 is permitted, with or without parent, effectively censoring any film which wishes to be viewed by minors, forcing the filmmakers to bow down to the pressure of the MPAA’s vague ratings and the special interest groups that lurk in the shadows behind them.
This is the premise of This Film is Not Yet Rated a movie about the pure and utter bullshit of the MPAA and it’s completely arbitrary ratings system. It is a documentary looking into exactly how films get an NC-17 rating, who gives this rating, and the near impossibility of getting that rating revoked upon appeal. What the MPAA’s ratings board (called CARA) is, according to the MPAA, is a board of members who are to serve no longer than five years, who are parents of children between the ages of 5 – 17 representing the average American parent’s interest and opinions in film.
“Other than the Chairperson, the Vice-Chair and the Senior Raters, the names of the members of the Rating Board are not provided to the public or any producer or distributor submitting a motion picture for rating. The reason for maintaining the confidentiality of their identities is to avoid even the appearance that they may be subject to outside influences.” –MPAA website
No child psychologists or experts in the field of violence, sex, media, and/or psychology are allowed on the board, as this would be outside influence.
Award-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick turned his lens on the secretive MPAA film review board using an LA-based private investigator he hired out of a local phone book and information from two former MPAA review board members. His search yielded some interesting results:
2005 MPAA Review Board Members:
Chairperson: Joan Graves (the only member of the board whose information the MPAA makes public)
Other Members:
- Anthony “Tony” Hey – 61 – divorced – age of children: 28 & 30
- Barry Freeman – 45- married – elementary school aged children
- Arleen Bates – 44 – married – age of children: 15 & 23
- Matt Ioakimedes – 46 – divorced – age of children: 17 & 20 (had served as a rater for 9 years as of 2005)
- Joan Worden – 56 – married – age of children: 18 (twins)
- Scott Young – 51 – married – age of children: 22 & 24 (next door neighbor to Ms. Bates)
- Joann Yatabe – 61- married – age of children: 22 & 25
- Howard Friedkin – 47 – divorced – no children (aspiring screenwriter)
- “Kori” – Information Unavailable
I would love to know how many of those people, if any, still had their jobs after the film was released.
Though this information is made available in the film, and although Wikipedia has a page for this film, the list was not on Wikipedia. I checked the list of edits to Wikipedia that had been made to that page and found none that specified removing the 2005 Board Members from the article, which I could simply restore. So, I returned to the film and pulled the information from there. Time will tell how long Wikipedia leaves the information up.
Board members are meant to be kept secret, according to the MPAA, because “to avoid even the appearance that they may be subject to outside influences.” However, according to This Film is Not Yet Rated, “Fact: As a part of their job, raters discuss submitted films with studio personnel.” More over, it would seem to be a conflict of interest to have an aspiring screenwriter on the board, but this does not concern the MPAA, nor does the inconsistency in applying the soft rules of board members having school aged children and not serving for more than five years. Of the eight members for whom the information was provided, only three had children in the appropriate age range, and of those, two had other children outside of the age range.
Is it really that hard to find the parents of children between the ages of 5 and 17 in Las Angeles?
Also of note is that, while board members are kept anonymous to prevent outside influences, it should be noted that Joan Graves stated to one director interviewed for the film that the MPAA could not change their rating, not for their own sake, but because groups (such as the unnamed but implied Focus on the Family) will write letters. Therefore, though this director won an R rating by a 5-3 vote, Ms. Graves (whose vote was already counted) would essentially be vetoing the votes and giving it an NC-17 rating anyway, to stop the special interest groups from complaining.
If you would like to complain next time you see a film that has been improperly rated, I encourage you to write the MPAA. Afterall, why should Focus on the Family get all the say? Tell the people you think films that have been rated NC-17 should be rated R, or that an R-rated film should have been PG-13! The conservative Christian vocal minority is! The MPAA offices in Washington and California are:
Office of the Chairman and CEO
Washington, DC
1600 Eye St., NW
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 293-1966 (main)
(202) 296-7410 (fax)
|
Los Angeles
15503 Ventura Blvd.
Encino, California 91436
(818) 995-6600 (main)
(818) 382-1795 (fax) |
More important is the perceived impartiality of the MPAA Review Board, whose ratings are completely subjective and not bound to any precedent they have set in the rating of previous films. The film points out several times over that while heterosexual sex scenes often get the benefit of the doubt when it comes down to R vs. NC-17 rating — which can be the difference between a hit at the box office and a film that two people see — while homosexual sex scenes almost universally are “slapped” with the NC-17 rating. Other biases in the board include male nudity (full frontal = NC-17), female orgasm (almost guaranteed NC-17 rating before cuts) and sex involving minorities (specifically in relationship to the film Love & Basketball). Independent films are also more likely to receive an NC-17, with less guidance as to what in the film was found objectionable and less likely to have that overturned on appeal.
Throughout the film, Dick interviews filmmakers who have been shafted by the MPAA Review Board when it comes to the ratings system. Matt Stone recalls the issues the review board had with puppet sex featured in Team America: World Police and how the board rejected the initial title for the South Park film South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose, even though this is exactly what happens in the film and there is precedent for “hell” being used in the title of films (Hell Blazer and Jason Goes to Hell, among others). The board then approved the penis joke title South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut for two weeks, when it suddenly realized what “bigger” “longer” and “uncut” referred to and objected, only to have the studio step in and say it could not be changed at that point.
Dick does not just expose the MPAA for the biased, lobbying group that stomps on free speech and consumer rights — he also submitted his documentary to the MPAA for review, which came back, unsurprisingly, with an NC-17 rating. The remainder of the film chronicles his appeal to the MPAA appeals board, which has an attorney, a secondary review board which is more secretive than the first, made up of studio and theater chain executives and two members of the clergy, who “provide transparency and moral guidance” according to Michael McClellan, the only member of the secretive appeals board who would speak on the record to Dick.
After seeing the film and speaking to Dick by telephone about his belief that the MPAA should be transparent, MPAA chairwoman Joan Graves hired a black-windowed, black van to cart MPAA Appeal Board members to the This Film is Not Yet Rated appeal. However, Dick’s private dick was able to get the names of the board members even with this precaution taken:
- Matt Brandt, President, Trans-Lux Theaters
- Pete Cole, film buyer, The Movie Experience
- Bruce Corwin, chairman and CEO, Metropolitan Theatres
- Alan Davy, film buyer, Regal Entertainment
- Mike Doban, president, Archangelo Entertainment
- Steve Gilula, CEO, Fox Searchlight Pictures
- Frank Haffar, COO, Maya Cinemas
- John Lodigian, vice president of sales, Sony Pictures
- Michael McClellan, vice president and film buyer, Landmark Theatres
- Milton Moritz, CA/NV chapter president, North American Theatre Owners
- Len Westenberg, VP of operations, west coast division, Loews Cineplex Theatres
- Jonathan Wolf, director, American Film Market
- The Reverend James Wall, United Methodist Church minister representative, National Council of Churches
- Harry Forbes, representative, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Two ordained ministers, who may or may not have an actual vote in the appears process, preside with the very people who are in charge of distributing a film over whether or not the rating handed down by uninformed, ordinary (read: no black or openly homosexual) parents who are influenced by the perceived threat of lobbying groups such as Focus on the Family.
Dick’s appeal, naturally, is turned down — unanimously.
Due to the addition of the scenes involving the appeal, the NC-17 rating could no longer be used, and the film is now unrated.
“In 2005, President Bush signed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which … establishes new penalties for pirating works that have not yet been released commercially.” –MPAA website
In the deleted scenes section, along with a lot more complaints about the MPAA from directors/writers such as Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, and John Waters, is a ten minute section of film where director Kirby Dick makes two phone calls to the MPAA — first to make sure that his film will not be copied upon submission for review, and secondarily to confirm with Joan Graves that his film has not been copied after the NC-17 rating is given. Several days later, there is a phone call from the MPAA’s attorney stating he has a copy of the film, made without the consent of the director or his production company.
“Videocassette piracy is the illegal duplication, distribution, rental or sale of copyrighted videocassettes.” –MPAA website
“Illegal copies are sometimes made from legitimate advance copies used for screening and marketing purposes.” –MPAA website
The lawyer stated that the copy was made as a back up, and that it was in order to protect the rights of the board members named in the film.
“In several lawsuits, the MPAA has repeatedly said that it’s illegal to make a back-up of a DVD that I purchased.” –Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) website
No lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Mr. Dick for the copyright infringement perpetrated by the MPAA against their own guidelines and hard-lobbied-for Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
No, not the planet and, technically, not all instances of the letter “m” but you wouldn’t know the latter from the disclaimer on the end of recent M&Ms radio adverts which states:
M&Ms and the letter “m” are trademarks of Mars Corporation
Of course, the are referring to the trademark the own on the very specific typeset letter that appears on their candies, but a literal reading of the advert suggests the letter m itself is a trademark of the Mars Corporation — which means I owe Mars royalties for 16 uses of their trademarked letter. Well, seventeen now. Not including the title of this piece or the name of this blog. Shit, that’s eighteen now! Sorry! I just can’t help myself (19)! I love trademark (20) infringement (21), I suppose, or it could be that I am (22) just a criminal (23) mastermind (25) that will, even subconsciously, infringe trademark (26) at all costs!
God, somebody (27) stop me (28) before I infringe again!
Twenty-eight infringements (29) in one post? DAMMIT! (31)
