This Film Should Be a Required Course.
Before you guys read this blog entry, you should go out and get this movie - I think anyone in the RTF department who even slightly wants to be involved in film later in life should watch this movie. This Film is Not Yet Rated, a documentary by Kirby Dick, seeks to unravel the secrecy behind the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), which, as many of you probably know or can tell by the movie poster, is responsible for the ratings for films in America. Although the board is supposed to be "transparent," Joan Graves, Jack Valenti and other founding members or operators of the MPAA keep the identity of the raters secret to prevent "outside influence." This point, like many of the other justifications the MPAA leaders make, is ripped apart by this amazing documentary.
The interviewing style of this doc is not very exciting - just your run of the mill single-camera, talking-head-style interviews. However, the filmmakers, media critics, lawyers, anti-censorship activists, and theorists that Kirby Dick finds to interview make up for it with their amazing insight. The film also does an amazing job of pointing out the absurdity and overtly conservative decision-making of the MPAA's rating system by addressing the hypocrisy of the board and the juxtaposition between extreme violence (which tends to get lower ratings) and "graphic" or "aberrant" sexuality (which tends to get higher ratings). I don't want to give too much away as to how this difference is bullshit, so you'll have to just see the movie. Besides, part of the reward of watching this doc is the way it visually pairs scenes from one R-rated movie with scenes from one NC-17 movie with incredibly similar content.
The film features many accredited, award-winning and wonderfully relatable directors, including Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), Wayne Kramer (The Cooler), Kevin Smith (Clerks), John Waters (A Dirty Shame, Pink Flamingos), Matt Stone (South Park, Team America: World Police), and many others.
If you're interested in filmmaking or movies at all, this movie should disgust you, upset you, or at least make you reconsider the American ratings system. I highly recommend this doc - should be its own RTF course...
1 comment:
I totally agree with Ben that this film should be taught as an RTF course (however that may work). This documentary definitely fits in the active documentarian category (ala Michael Moore). Hopefully Dick's agenda is one that all filmmakers (and the general viewing public) can agree on. I personally think any rating system is rather absurd, as it forces the ratings board's morality on all those who view the films that it oversees. But that's just my opinion, one that might be a bit extreme.
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