Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 2: Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. But where's wal though
Speaker 2: right over there apparently.
Speaker 1: Man, I wish people could hear in between stuff.
Speaker 2: I think Jerry was recording that last one.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think so. She used to give us
Speaker 1: a neat little outtakes, but she doesn't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: Those days are long gone. They exist in the vault, though.
Speaker 1: How you doing?
Speaker 2: I cood no, No, I don't know what's wrong with me.
Speaker 2: I am off.
Speaker 1: Today, out of your game?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1: Well, I think this is the perfect podcast to set
Speaker 1: you straight. Why because it's something that we both have
Speaker 1: some passion about against.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think anybody who's seen the documentary this film
Speaker 2: is not yet rated. Yeah, that would be very difficult
Speaker 2: to not be persuaded to feel strongly about the MPAA
Speaker 2: and its practices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and at least how they do things.
Speaker 2: But we're going to try to be objective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say up front, I
Speaker 1: have no problem with rating a film's content so parents
Speaker 1: can decide whether or not it's appropriate. I think it's valuable,
Speaker 1: but I think there are ways to do it that
Speaker 1: I don't think the MPa does. Yes, So I just
Speaker 1: wanted to float that early on.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think that was probably smart. Okay, Okay, I
Speaker 2: don't have kids, so I don't really whatever. But I mean,
Speaker 2: I can understand the value of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it gives you an idea, Like I like
Speaker 1: having an idea what I'm about to see too.
Speaker 2: I feel like I can tell just from watching a
Speaker 2: trailer of previewsing a movie poster. I'm pretty I'm pretty
Speaker 2: intuitive when it comes to the marketing techniques of movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think like being a film nerd, it's like,
Speaker 1: is the New Is the New Avengers movie going to
Speaker 1: be rated? R? That really tells you something, Right, it
Speaker 1: won't be. No, it never would be, because PG thirteen
Speaker 1: is the the that's the strikes one.
Speaker 2: These days, it really is. Apparently PG thirteen movies pull
Speaker 2: in more money than all other ratings combined. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it's a relatively new phenomenon. You want to talk about
Speaker 2: its origin, Yeah, let's do it. So Back in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four, a man named Steven Spielberg had two movies
Speaker 2: out who Steven Spielberg, Right. He directed one, Indiana Jones
Speaker 2: and the Templar Doom, and he produced another, Gremlins. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and both of them caught He caught a lot of
Speaker 2: heat from both of them.
Speaker 1: Sure, Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene specifically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but also the snake, the live snake at the
Speaker 2: feast thing yeah. Yeah, all the snake babies, the eyeballs,
Speaker 2: all that stuff. And then with Gremlins, it was just
Speaker 2: downright terrifying in a lot of different places, especially if
Speaker 2: you're a kid. And the reason he caught heat was
Speaker 2: because both of those movies were rated PG. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: Spielberg went to the NPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America,
Speaker 2: and said, let's do something about this, because these clearly
Speaker 2: aren't our movies. Yeah, but they apparently aren't PG movies either,
Speaker 2: so maybe we should come up with something in between.
Speaker 2: And PG thirteen was born.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this was before he had all this sway
Speaker 1: in the world. He was influential, but it wasn't like
Speaker 1: Spielberg today, who could have just waved his wand and
Speaker 1: made it happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I think even at the time he was important.
Speaker 2: He Yeah, there were very few directors at that time
Speaker 2: who could have gotten something like that done.
Speaker 1: Yea too.
Speaker 2: So that's where PG thirteen came from, and that, like
Speaker 2: you said, that's the strike zone now. And the reason
Speaker 2: why is because that is the kind of movie that
Speaker 2: caters to young teenage boys, who apparently are the most
Speaker 2: successful at getting girls to go to movies with them.
Speaker 2: So if you can get a movie rated PG thirteen, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're going to make a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus it makes sense, it's right there in the middle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: But the problem is is it's become a means of
Speaker 2: almost advertising that rating rather than cautioning parents. It's a
Speaker 2: way of attracting the audience.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: True, it's like this is some kids PG movie.
Speaker 2: This is as close to an R movie as you
Speaker 2: can get.
Speaker 1: In Yeah, and I think filmmakers try to achieve that
Speaker 1: rating by either scaling back their R rated movie or
Speaker 1: juicing up their PG movie.
Speaker 2: Or adding more violence. Apparently PG thirteen movies are have
Speaker 2: tripled in violence over the last few decades. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: they now have, according to one study, more violence than
Speaker 2: there are rated counterparts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and different kinds of violence that you didn't used
Speaker 1: to see. Yeah, you know, all right, I guess we
Speaker 1: should go back in time a little bit. Let's is
Speaker 1: it way back machine?
Speaker 2: Sure, let's let's go way back in time in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: All right, it's nineteen twenty two. Hollywood and Vine is
Speaker 1: a viable intersection in Hollywood at the time, unlike now,
Speaker 1: although people are going to say no, they built that
Speaker 1: area back up. Yeah, and that is when the NPA
Speaker 1: was born in the early nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And at the time, it was up to local authorities
Speaker 1: or your state or your municipality to either stamp something
Speaker 1: as moral or immoral. There were no ratings on movies.
Speaker 1: And thanks to a guy named Will Hayes who was
Speaker 1: the first president of the NBA, he installed the Hayes
Speaker 1: Code and said, you're either going to pass or fail.
Speaker 1: It's either going to be stamped in moral or moral.
Speaker 2: Right. And the reason Will Hayes, who was the NPAA president,
Speaker 2: came up with the Hayes Code, which was really extensive.
Speaker 2: It was like, if you talk about the government, it
Speaker 2: always has to be good, sexuality has to be repressed,
Speaker 2: and just basically in hetero how you think about all
Speaker 2: movies from like the thirties and forties. Yeah, squeaky clean
Speaker 2: basically sure, like the division between good and evil is
Speaker 2: very clearly defined and the good guy always wins. And
Speaker 2: if he didn't fall into that Hayes code, like you said,
Speaker 2: your movie would be stamped immoral. But the whole reason
Speaker 2: he came up with this code was because local municipalities
Speaker 2: could pass their own obscenity laws and that could be
Speaker 2: bad for business.
Speaker 1: So is it not even get your film exhibited?
Speaker 2: Right? So remember in the A c l U episode
Speaker 2: where we're talking about that one, that one movie that
Speaker 2: New York just the Catholics said no, you can't show
Speaker 2: that here, and the a cl you went to work
Speaker 2: getting getting the Catholics beaten in court.
Speaker 1: Right, even though it was just a bad movie that
Speaker 1: had something to do with well, I mean it did,
Speaker 1: but it shouldn't have been shown because it was so terrible.
Speaker 2: Was it bad?
Speaker 1: I don't remember. Yeah, I mean it was supposed to
Speaker 1: be not very good.
Speaker 2: Okay, but it happened like that kind of thing happened
Speaker 2: a lot like local local town said no, we're not
Speaker 2: going to show that movie. So Hayes figured out if
Speaker 2: if Hollywood policed itself. Then they could control what, you know,
Speaker 2: what movies came out, and therefore everybody could make a
Speaker 2: bunch of money. That's right, And that's the point of
Speaker 2: the NPAA. They're the lobbying arm of six major Hollywood studios.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're there. They worked for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's one way to say it.
Speaker 2: But they and it's just too isn't it.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, there's definitely an arguments these days
Speaker 1: that independent filmmakers have a much rougher time with the NBA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but most of the indies too, are eventually distributed by
Speaker 1: the majors. Anyway, I got you. You know what I'm saying. Okay,
Speaker 1: So flash forward a bit in our way back machine
Speaker 1: to the nineteen fifties. Things changed a little bit after
Speaker 1: World War Two and people, I guess the easiest way
Speaker 1: to say is people loosen up a little bit and
Speaker 1: didn't mind certain elements in their entertainment any longer. Yes,
Speaker 1: A big example this article uses Frank Sinatra got an
Speaker 1: Oscar nomination for playing a heroin Addict in The Man
Speaker 1: with a Golden Arm, And that couldn't have happened in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2: No, millions of people hadn't died in World War Two yet,
Speaker 2: that's right. I imagine that kind of loosens you up
Speaker 2: as far as the seeing Chris Wards and stuff in
Speaker 2: movies goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that's not a big deal, Like World War
Speaker 1: two is a big deal, right, get your haunches down exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was the big one, the big first crack to
Speaker 2: the Hayes code. Yeah, and then there were I think
Speaker 2: that you said He.
Speaker 1: Won an Oscar, right, Yeah, it was a really good
Speaker 1: movie that kind.
Speaker 2: Of opened the floodgate, so that by the end of
Speaker 2: the fifties you got some like it hot and Tony
Speaker 2: Curtis and Jack lemon are dressed like women hitting on
Speaker 2: Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, And at that point it was pretty
Speaker 2: obvious that Hayes code was dead. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, they weren't passing the code, but they were
Speaker 1: still getting released. So once something is subverted like that,
Speaker 1: it's dead in the water.
Speaker 2: Right, So there was a that was fine for a
Speaker 2: little while. I think the Hayes code just kind of
Speaker 2: fell to the wayside and people were releasing movies without
Speaker 2: any kind of moral or immoral stamp. But the rating
Speaker 2: system as we understand it today hadn't come about yet. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's kind of a limbo period until nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight and a store owner in New York with the
Speaker 2: last name of Ginsburg got busted for selling Newti maags
Speaker 2: to sixteen year old boys, and he took it all
Speaker 2: the way to the Supreme Court saying, you can't say
Speaker 2: anything about this. There's federal laws about upsidnity, not local laws.
Speaker 2: In the Supreme Court said, you know what, we really
Speaker 2: think it's sut to local municipalities to decide what they
Speaker 2: want their miners exposed to or not. That got Hollywood's
Speaker 2: attention because all of a sudden, local municipalities could decide
Speaker 2: whether or not they wanted to show movies to minors
Speaker 2: or not. So what was old became new again. And
Speaker 2: Jack Valenti, who was in charge of the MPAA, said
Speaker 2: we need another system of another self policing system, and
Speaker 2: he came up with the rating system that we have today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he, I mean Jack Valenti was the head
Speaker 1: of the NBA for close to forty years, and he
Speaker 1: initially the intention was to stop censorship because he feared
Speaker 1: that the movies were going to start being censored locally
Speaker 1: and so I think the origins of the NPA rating system.
Speaker 1: We're art centered.
Speaker 2: Art center, but also money centered, because again, if you
Speaker 2: have if you have town A showing the movie, but
Speaker 2: Town's B through L deciding that the movie is obscene
Speaker 2: and not showing it, then you're losing that money and
Speaker 2: B through L. So what Valenti came up with was
Speaker 2: this idea that let us tell you what is appropriate
Speaker 2: for minors or not what movie is, and we'll just
Speaker 2: make a simple rating system. Yeah, gpg R.
Speaker 1: Or X the old X yeah, and triple X, which
Speaker 1: wasn't even formally a rating, it was just.
Speaker 2: A marketing tool.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because three exes, that's like whoa.
Speaker 2: I wonder if anybody ever came out with one with.
Speaker 1: Four X yeah or double X even yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 1: we cut out that one part so X.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Christian, our colleague here, wrote a great blog post about
Speaker 1: the former X rated movie.
Speaker 2: Is that right? Yeah, we'll have to check that out.
Speaker 2: That's good for brain Stuff for stuff a genius.
Speaker 1: On the brain stuff blog earlier this year. And you
Speaker 1: actually recommended it on your blog, the X rating, Yeah
Speaker 1: the best I remember it this week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember recommending one of his things I just
Speaker 2: don't remember that one.
Speaker 1: Just good. I thought about asking him in here, but
Speaker 1: then I thought, yeah, we got it nice. So yeah,
Speaker 1: back then it was G through X and well we'll
Speaker 1: talk about you know how that changed maybe after this
Speaker 1: message break. All right, so no longer do we have
Speaker 1: X rayed movies. Now we have something. I guess we
Speaker 1: should just go through what these ratings mean today in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Okay, so you've got your G.
Speaker 2: G's always been G general audience.
Speaker 1: Anyone can see it, Yes, and that's your your family
Speaker 1: cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Then you've got PG that means no drug use, maybe violence,
Speaker 1: because as we'll learn, the MPa has less problems with
Speaker 1: violence and more problems with language and sex. Huge criticism,
Speaker 1: huge criticism PG thirteen, which we've you know, kind of
Speaker 1: been through. Then you've got your R and that is
Speaker 1: no one under said. This is a suggestion that no
Speaker 1: one ever seventeen be admitted without a parent. And these
Speaker 1: aren't laws, though, that's one thing that's important to point out.
Speaker 1: Those are suggestions, And then theaters have policies.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's let's kind of dig into that. So none
Speaker 2: of this is legally binding. Now, none of them are
Speaker 2: anything more than recommendations. They're basically saying that this movie
Speaker 2: has X amount of profanity or x amount of nudity,
Speaker 2: or lacks any drug use or something like that. Sure,
Speaker 2: and so for what the MPAA thinks the average moral
Speaker 2: compass of the average American thinks about these different things
Speaker 2: like sex, drugs, nudity, all that stuff, this movie falls
Speaker 2: into this rating. Right, And again it's not enforceable. You
Speaker 2: don't even need to have a rating to release a movie.
Speaker 2: But if you want to get your movie in theaters,
Speaker 2: there's basically no theater chain out there right now, no
Speaker 2: major theater chain out there right now that will show
Speaker 2: an unrated movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film
Speaker 1: to the MPa ratings board.
Speaker 3: But it's de facto, but you have to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the.
Speaker 1: Rub is that they say it's voluntary, but you actually
Speaker 1: have to pay a fee to submit your movie if
Speaker 1: you ever want to have it shown in theaters.
Speaker 2: Right and the fee is anywhere from like twenty five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars for a big budget movie to seven hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty dollars for a short Yeah, and so you
Speaker 2: submit your movie. Well, we'll get into it in a second.
Speaker 2: Let's talk some more about the rest of the ratings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there's only one more, and that's NC seventeen,
Speaker 1: which replaced X. And that means this is a nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety and that basically means that it's for adults only
Speaker 1: and you should not come in if you're under eighteen.
Speaker 2: Right, and also means these days it's foreign or about
Speaker 2: lesbian or gays. Basically, yeah, not fully, but sure, it's
Speaker 2: pretty close. Yeah, and NC seventeen. The first movie to
Speaker 2: come out with that was Henry in June. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: have to be confused with Benny and June, and it
Speaker 2: basically sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is X now, right, NC seventeen. If you jumble it
Speaker 2: all together, it looks like X. And the whole reason
Speaker 2: they came out with NC seventeen was to replace X
Speaker 2: because X was associated exclusively with pornography in the minds
Speaker 2: of moviegoers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right, So let's get into this
Speaker 1: the actual ratings board. There's the NPAA, and then working
Speaker 1: for the NPA is the Classification and Ratings Administration. Kara
Speaker 1: and Kara doesn't say whether your movie stinks or not.
Speaker 1: Kara is eight to thirteen people and they are called raiders,
Speaker 1: and they are overseen by a senior raider, and they
Speaker 1: sit down and watch these movies and take copious notes
Speaker 1: on what they think based on their standards. Is I
Speaker 1: don't want to say offensive, but just noteworthy, right, Like
Speaker 1: maybe they're not offended, but they think the average mom
Speaker 1: and sheboygan might be offended.
Speaker 2: Right supposedly, which is a kind of a thing because
Speaker 2: the whole rating system, as you just kind of pointed out,
Speaker 2: is a subjective.
Speaker 1: Totally subjective. They supposedly. Here's the other rub is it's
Speaker 1: all secret.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You can find out a federal judge's name and address,
Speaker 1: but you can't find out who a raider is for
Speaker 1: your films. It's all conducted in private. None of this
Speaker 1: stuff is released. And that's one of the big rubs
Speaker 1: in that documentary and with filmmakers in general, is it's
Speaker 1: all done behind closed doors. There's never any explanations provided.
Speaker 1: These people are supposed to have kids between ages of
Speaker 1: five and seventeen, but many of them do not, right,
Speaker 1: either have kids at all or have kids that are
Speaker 1: older than eighteen.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: It basically frees them up from any accountability. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: do this all in private and in secrecy.
Speaker 2: And until that movie by Kirby what is Kirby's last name?
Speaker 1: Henry and June No no, the documentary Oh oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this film is not yet rated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, until Kirby Dick's this film is Not Yet Rated
Speaker 2: came out, Like all of this stuff was just conjection,
Speaker 2: conjecture in Hollywood legend. Yeah, he was the first one
Speaker 2: to really basically he tailed these people, tail them to lunch, yeah,
Speaker 2: to find out who they were, and eavesdrop on them,
Speaker 2: and like did some digging and found like these anonymous
Speaker 2: people did not fall into the requirements that the NPA
Speaker 2: said they did. And so not only was it in secret,
Speaker 2: it was it was fraudulent. Basically, this rating system, so
Speaker 2: according to the standards, you submit your film, this group
Speaker 2: of people, this anonymous group of people, watch it, they
Speaker 2: rate it, and then they come together and vote on
Speaker 2: a rating, and then they pass their their vote along
Speaker 2: to a senior raider who talks to the movie's distributor
Speaker 2: or director or producer says, here's the rating, here's why
Speaker 2: we rated it like this, and then your face with
Speaker 2: the choice. You can accept the rating. You can edit
Speaker 2: your film as per the CRA's recommendations.
Speaker 1: Take out these bad words, cut the sex scene a
Speaker 1: little early, leave all the violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or you can reject the rating and just release
Speaker 2: your movie is unrated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which, well, you can try to release it, but
Speaker 1: since no one will show it, it's really sort of
Speaker 1: a misnomer.
Speaker 2: Right, but it's becoming increasingly a thing again. You need
Speaker 2: the rating to get your movie shown in movie theaters.
Speaker 2: But what happens if you don't care if your movie
Speaker 2: comes out in theaters, video and demand, yeah, or just
Speaker 2: releasing it to the internet.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm curious about that. How that's going to change
Speaker 1: the landscape?
Speaker 2: Well, right now, it's a huge threat to the NPAA
Speaker 2: because all of the power they wield is found in
Speaker 2: this rating system.
Speaker 1: And if for theaters, yes, if no one's going to theaters.
Speaker 2: Then the MPAA loses all that power, which is a
Speaker 2: big deal, especially now because the NPAA is needed more
Speaker 2: than ever as a lobbying group because of online piracy,
Speaker 2: which we'll talk about some more. So it's a very
Speaker 2: precarious time for the MPAA right now, and it's a
Speaker 2: terrible time for them to be under as much scrutiny
Speaker 2: and public attack and critique as they are. So it's
Speaker 2: I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way,
Speaker 2: and their trunk is flailing and they're honking.
Speaker 1: That is true. One thing I should point out is
Speaker 1: I said, is that there's no accountability. That's what the
Speaker 1: NPA says. It's the good thing about the secrecy is
Speaker 1: that it frees them up. That anonymity does. It frees
Speaker 1: them up from accountability. I just don't agree, right, Okay.
Speaker 2: So if you want to appeal, there was apparently a
Speaker 2: change made in response to Kirby Dick's movie the documentary
Speaker 2: before if you were appealing your rating, which is very difficult,
Speaker 2: almost never was done and.
Speaker 1: Well you never want that's for sure, right.
Speaker 2: And when you were appealing, you couldn't reference any other film.
Speaker 2: It was totally done in a vacuum, which is pretty preposterous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that's the only way to be able to
Speaker 1: tell us like, wait a minute, if you said this
Speaker 1: about this, then why not this for my movie?
Speaker 2: Which meant that there was no real standard yeah that
Speaker 2: you could point to, or there were standards you could
Speaker 2: point to, they just would be considered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or at the very least, if they do have
Speaker 1: written standards, they don't release them, so you don't even
Speaker 1: know what they are.
Speaker 2: Right. So the MPAA is they've got their rating system,
Speaker 2: they've got the appeals process.
Speaker 1: Which was also in secret, unless that's changed, right I think.
Speaker 1: I think the appeals board not only was the appeals
Speaker 1: board and secret, but they weren't even just raiders. They
Speaker 1: were people from the industry.
Speaker 2: Right, and the Theater Owners Association exactly, whereas the people
Speaker 2: who were raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the movie industry
Speaker 2: and are just like average ordinary.
Speaker 1: Parents representing your Middle America. We'll just call it, even
Speaker 1: though I think that's insulting.
Speaker 2: The thing is, though, is a lot of people criticize
Speaker 2: the NPA and say, these raiders are really representing the
Speaker 2: six major studios who rake in ninety five percent of
Speaker 2: the ten point nine billion dollars made in the United States. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in theaters alone, just ticket sales, not DVD or anything
Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, And that's what the NPAA does in
Speaker 2: addition to rating. They are, like we said, the lobby
Speaker 2: arm for these six studios, that's.
Speaker 1: Right, and they I guess we should talk about piracy now. Huh.
Speaker 1: That's one of their other big asides from rating movies,
Speaker 1: they are heavy in the lobby against well, especially now
Speaker 1: with online piracy, because the digital distribution network is it
Speaker 1: seems like the way forward as far as distribution goes, right,
Speaker 1: it's the futre. It's not the future, it's the present
Speaker 1: and the future.
Speaker 2: And the NPAA has a they're accused of basically trying
Speaker 2: to quell new technology, yeah, by just saying like, well,
Speaker 2: let's just keep people from peer to peer file sharing
Speaker 2: in total, yeah, so that they can't steal movies. In part,
Speaker 2: and if you go back to the early eighties, Jack
Speaker 2: Valente was known to have railed and lobbied against the
Speaker 2: legality of VCRs.
Speaker 1: People are just gonna be recording things and handing them.
Speaker 2: Out to their friends exactly. So there was a The
Speaker 2: NPA is a long history of basically like just doing
Speaker 2: anything at can to stifle innovation in order to protect
Speaker 2: the profits of these big movie studios. The other problem
Speaker 2: with them lobbying in favor of these six movie studios
Speaker 2: is that they inherently have a conflict of interest against
Speaker 2: the studios that are not part of these six that
Speaker 2: they represent, but whose movies they still rate, so they've
Speaker 2: been accused of more scrupulously or scrutinously rating the movies
Speaker 2: of rival studios or foreign studios when assigning a rating.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's why filmmakers call consistently for transparency. It's
Speaker 1: I don't think there are many filmmakers out there saying
Speaker 1: should be no rating, we should just maybe some like
Speaker 1: a large fontrier, you know, or Werner Hertzog. They're probably
Speaker 1: like nota eight things at all. But I think they
Speaker 1: just want transparency, like open it up and let everyone
Speaker 1: know how this is all done, who these people are,
Speaker 1: and give us an idea on what in the world
Speaker 1: we're submitting to voluntarily, quote unquote. Pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: So you were talking about online piracy and with digital
Speaker 2: distribution being a big deal now, the MPa is needed
Speaker 2: more than ever because they have to lobby Congress to
Speaker 2: fight online piracy at a time when more and more
Speaker 2: people are distributing online and going around the MPAA. So
Speaker 2: it's losing its power, but it needs its power more
Speaker 2: than ever. So, like we said, it's a precarious time
Speaker 2: for the MPAA. And they tried a few things. They
Speaker 2: were successful with the what was the first one in
Speaker 2: two thousand, the Digital Sofa No, the Digital Millennium Right Act, right,
Speaker 2: which basically that up until then it wasn't a federal
Speaker 2: crime to share movies on peer to peer networks. Right,
Speaker 2: that one did it and they got that passed. The
Speaker 2: MPAA lobbied and got that passed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've cracked down on camcorder recording, yeap. Like when
Speaker 1: you're in New York City and someone has that brand
Speaker 1: new copy of Godzilla on video cassette for you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's because if you've seen Seinfeld, someone went and sat
Speaker 1: in that theater with a camera recorder and just made
Speaker 1: a stupid, awful quality pirated version.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it says that those are the most common.
Speaker 2: I guess I kind of believe that they're also the
Speaker 2: worst quality. Like sometimes people will like get up and
Speaker 2: move in front of the camera, like they go to
Speaker 2: the bathroom or something, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I've never seen one, but I think they're terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah much. I don't want to say more common, but
Speaker 2: probably more common these days are like copies of screeners. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like they send out DVDs to everybody who's members of
Speaker 2: the Academy to vote on movies and so around OSCAR
Speaker 2: timer before Oscar time, it seems like the Internet gets
Speaker 2: flooded with way more high quality copies of these major
Speaker 2: movies that are up for awards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think now they have, thanks to the NBA,
Speaker 1: have something coded to your name now on your copy.
Speaker 2: So like they'll know who leaked it or whatever. I
Speaker 2: think so not surprised by that. Apparently, if you want
Speaker 2: to show Frozen at your church, yeah, you better have
Speaker 2: a public performance license because it is illegal to show
Speaker 2: a movie outside of your home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that surprised me. But there are a lot of
Speaker 1: especially in the summertime, a lot of community screenings, like
Speaker 1: every city now has, you know, Atlanta shows them, and
Speaker 1: I think at Oakland Cemetery some other places in New York.
Speaker 1: They have them all over the place, and technically, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to have a license to do so, I'm
Speaker 1: sure they do the big ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the big ones, I'm sure do.
Speaker 1: But like at your community pool and you want to
Speaker 1: show et and.
Speaker 2: The Feds could come kick the gate down around the pool.
Speaker 2: I bet everybody.
Speaker 1: I bet they don't love HBO these days because you
Speaker 1: know HBO go people steal that. They're just like, hey, dude,
Speaker 1: what's your log in.
Speaker 2: Oh right, yeah, and.
Speaker 1: HBO came out and they're like, who cares?
Speaker 2: Yeah, people are watching it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like go watch a True Detective. Maybe you'll sign
Speaker 1: up for HBO, yeah because you liked it, or maybe
Speaker 1: you'll just support the show period on social media, even
Speaker 1: though you're getting it for free. Like we're making enough
Speaker 1: money basically.
Speaker 2: Yes, And that's something that a lot of people say,
Speaker 2: you know, film industry, we don't really feel that bad
Speaker 2: for you, Yeah, Seawan Austin sit down, because you guys
Speaker 2: made ten point nine billion dollars in America in ticket
Speaker 2: sales alone in twenty thirteen. We don't feel that bad
Speaker 2: about this whole conundrum that the MPAA is facing.
Speaker 1: What Sean asked and Steel he was voices Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh okay, yeah, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2: Yeah he was. I can't remember the There was like
Speaker 2: a whole kind of push an anti piracy pushed a
Speaker 2: few years back, and part of it yeah yeah, and
Speaker 2: he looked really mad about things too. But speaking of piracy,
Speaker 2: I remember there was a story that came out recently.
Speaker 2: It was if you think about it, at first, it's
Speaker 2: like wah wah, but then if you really kind of
Speaker 2: lended some thought. It's really disturbing. There were there was
Speaker 2: a report of prisoners at a prison being shown pirated movies,
Speaker 2: and some of the prisoners were there for pirrating movies,
Speaker 2: and like, really think about the injustice behind that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like that's just crazy town. Imagine if you've been like
Speaker 2: selling counterfeit first, and you go to prison and all
Speaker 2: of the all the guards are wearing counterfeit for coats.
Speaker 1: It'd be pretty swing in prison.
Speaker 2: It'd be weird, but it would also be unjust.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 2: But in relation to this, it's just more and more
Speaker 2: widespread every day. It feels like it's it's a losing battle.
Speaker 2: I think that the NPAA is fighting right now.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I read somewhere today that they I
Speaker 1: think they might release a few of the Raiders' names
Speaker 1: per film, not all like thirteen, right, But I need
Speaker 1: to look up that, look that up again, because that
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't see the why releasing a
Speaker 1: three out of thirteen names does anybody any good?
Speaker 2: It does zero good. Yeah, And speaking of doing zero good,
Speaker 2: this there's kind of a new attachment to the rating
Speaker 2: system that they have now. It's called check the box. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's it's basically a brief description of why a
Speaker 2: movie is, like PG thirteen. Yeah, so it'll say like
Speaker 2: intense sci fi action or something like that, or some
Speaker 2: drug use. Yeah, that kind of thing. And some critics
Speaker 2: of the NPAA say it's just basically like shooting a
Speaker 2: laser beam into like a fifteen year old boy's brain,
Speaker 2: like brief nudity. Come see it PG thirteen, Check it out, kid,
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of people are looking at
Speaker 2: it like it's it's just kind of a disingenuous advertisement,
Speaker 2: cynical advertisement, because the NPAA is accused of not regulating
Speaker 2: or even potentially directly marketing to kids under the age
Speaker 2: of the movies that are being advertised. So like you're
Speaker 2: seeing a lot of ads for like R rated movies
Speaker 2: on websites that are like very popular among like the
Speaker 2: seventeen and undercrowd. There's a lot of tie ins for
Speaker 2: PG thirteen movies with like kids toys for kids who
Speaker 2: are under who are under thirteen. And so there's like
Speaker 2: this idea that there's the NPA supposedly serving America's moral compasses. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but really at the same time, they're undermining that morality
Speaker 2: that they're supposedly defending, yeah, by marketing and exploiting kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be like a cigarette company having a cartoon
Speaker 1: animal as their mascot.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: Be weird? Well, one thing about the subjectivity of it
Speaker 1: and the fact that it is a closed book and
Speaker 1: they filmmakers don't even know, you know, how to tailor
Speaker 1: their movie to achieve a certain rating, I mean to
Speaker 1: within a certain degree. But they've learned how to manipulate
Speaker 1: it because there is no set standard by if you
Speaker 1: watch that film as not yet rated. And you've heard
Speaker 1: plenty of stories over the years about filmmakers intentionally putting
Speaker 1: in things that they never intend to be in the
Speaker 1: final movie. Oh yeah, just to sort of distract from
Speaker 1: some of the other things. So they'll shoot something kind
Speaker 1: of really outrageous to get the MPA's Raiders haunches up
Speaker 1: and what they were never going to keep that part anyway, right,
Speaker 1: So they're subverting the system because there is no set standard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're just the stuff they want to keep
Speaker 2: in is comparatively exactly more palatable.
Speaker 1: And if you don't have the set standard, where you
Speaker 1: can go and I wonder what those sheets look like
Speaker 1: on the interior, you know. I mean that's the great mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: surely they have their own interior standards. They're not just
Speaker 1: like watch it and see what you think.
Speaker 3: Well, they have group discussions too, man, I'd love to
Speaker 3: sit in on those.
Speaker 2: So the I read Another criticism of MPa is that
Speaker 2: the difference between PG thirteen movies and our movies these
Speaker 2: days is the profanity and the sexuality. That they're similar
Speaker 2: in violence, if not more violent in PG thirteen movies,
Speaker 2: and that this is kind of messed up, that the
Speaker 2: NPAA has very little problem with violence. Yeah, but when
Speaker 2: it comes to bad words or sexuality of almost any
Speaker 2: nature except for women being objectified and men being gratified, Yeah,
Speaker 2: then the MPAA suddenly puckers up. Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in any a woman achieving receiving sexual gratification, or
Speaker 1: a homosexual couple, yeah.
Speaker 2: Virtually like guaranteed or depending on how they do it,
Speaker 2: are if it's coming out of like one of the
Speaker 2: major studios.
Speaker 1: So in other words, a man can receive pleasure from
Speaker 1: a woman, and of course it's scrutinized somewhat, because any
Speaker 1: kind of sex is more heavily scrutinized than violence, right,
Speaker 1: but if a woman does like you said, or if
Speaker 1: it's a gay couple, it's all over so homophobic, misogynistic.
Speaker 3: You decide right, and fetishistic of violence, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, here's one example. There's a great article called
Speaker 1: don't Expect any major changes to the NPA rating system
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen. Yeah, and it's basically Chris Dodd, who's
Speaker 1: the new head and the gang, digging in and saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, we talked to your average parents and
Speaker 1: we pull them and this is what they want. But
Speaker 1: they release No, none of those studies are released. Yeah,
Speaker 1: none of those conversations are released. A movie like Filamina,
Speaker 1: which you saw, was rated at R. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: about a lady looking for a long lost sun.
Speaker 2: It was so far from an R movie, it was ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it had a couple of F bombs in it,
Speaker 1: so they cut those out and they bring it to
Speaker 1: a PG thirteen. You might think, who cares cut up
Speaker 1: the F bombs make it PG thirteen, But there's something
Speaker 1: bigger going on here, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a great AV Club article about how just
Speaker 2: totally out of step a lot of the ratings are
Speaker 2: and they have fifteen movies listed and basically talk about
Speaker 2: their ratings, like the first one. They talk about once. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that romantic. It wasn't like a romantic comedy, wasn't.
Speaker 1: No, I would say it was a other sweet just
Speaker 1: a modern day romance told through music. It wasn't a musical,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of musical numbers.
Speaker 2: Highly inoffensive love story. Yeah, very sweet movie. It had
Speaker 2: the same rating as Hostile Too, which is basically torture porn.
Speaker 2: They both got the same rating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should read this first line from the av club.
Speaker 1: In early summer of two thousand and seven, two films
Speaker 1: were released with our ratings. One featured a scene where
Speaker 1: a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling while another
Speaker 1: naked woman slashes her with a scyth and bays in
Speaker 1: her blood. The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together,
Speaker 1: falling in love and opting not to act on it.
Speaker 1: Like there was never any sex scene. They didn't even
Speaker 1: get together. Really, Nope, they're both rated.
Speaker 2: Are both rated are because of profanity.
Speaker 1: Rushmore rated R for the uh scene at the end,
Speaker 1: whether Max is putting on the play the Vietnam play
Speaker 1: and there is a shot of a couple of little
Speaker 1: kids looking at on the set. There's some Playboy centerfolds
Speaker 1: up in the locker, yep, like on the Vietnam set,
Speaker 1: and it shows these little kids like looking at those
Speaker 1: like a twelve year old would probably do.
Speaker 2: And it got an R for that, got an R
Speaker 2: for that. Happiness Todd Solins one of my favorite movies
Speaker 2: of all time. Yeah, they tried to give it an
Speaker 2: NC seventeen rating, and he said, you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: not cutting anything. You can just go take a long
Speaker 2: walk off a short pier, is what I think, he
Speaker 2: famously said to them. Yeah, and he released his movie
Speaker 2: as unrated.
Speaker 3: Oh really, yep, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2: Wait to go, Todd Solins.
Speaker 1: Or if you're looking at some serious homophobia, The Great
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine movie and Longtime Companion features no real
Speaker 1: sex acts at all, nothing explicit. In fact, the AV
Speaker 1: Club says it could show on network TV today with
Speaker 1: just a few alterations. But it was about a gay
Speaker 1: couple and uh so I got an NC seventeen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was something called Afternoon Delight, which was a
Speaker 2: movie about a woman who hires a giglow and it
Speaker 2: apparently is heavy on the the woman receiving sexual gratification.
Speaker 2: It got an R rating despite and it got an
Speaker 2: OUR rating after apparently the director cut a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff out and the director said, what the hey after
Speaker 2: Wolfe of Wall Street came out.
Speaker 3: Like have you seen this movie with like some very.
Speaker 2: Graphic apparent sex scenes between a man and a woman.
Speaker 2: But Leonardo DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most,
Speaker 2: So it's fine. It's an R, right, blue is the
Speaker 2: warmest color.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Last year that a teenage lesbian love story, and
Speaker 1: since seventeen, yeah, got a lot of attention, and there
Speaker 1: were some theaters that allowed high school age kids to
Speaker 1: go see that anyway.
Speaker 2: Because again, this isn't law, it's not binding, it's up
Speaker 2: to the theaters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just so strange that such a small group
Speaker 1: of people have such influence on such a large industry.
Speaker 2: And yeah, the secret the more you dig into it,
Speaker 2: the more conflicts of interest arise, and the more arbitrary
Speaker 2: the standards become, the more blood boiling it is. I
Speaker 2: highly recommend you go read some stuff like rated R
Speaker 2: for ridiculous by Kirby Dick his Little uh yeah, his
Speaker 2: little op ed about the MPAA that one US News
Speaker 2: and World Report article you wrote or suggested it was good.
Speaker 1: I wish I wrote it.
Speaker 2: Had you been there, would have been used correctly.
Speaker 1: Oh did they misuse it?
Speaker 2: What? Yeah? I know?
Speaker 1: Terrible. So the MPa will defend themselves and they say
Speaker 1: that there's no such bias and that we all these
Speaker 1: objectionable scenes are rated on the quality and how graphic
Speaker 1: it is. But if you just look at the you'd
Speaker 1: have to be a dummy not to see these correlations, right,
Speaker 1: And the fact that they don't seem to care that
Speaker 1: much about violence in this age where I don't know,
Speaker 1: does it influence people to go shoot up a school?
Speaker 1: Who knows?
Speaker 2: Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going.
Speaker 1: Around, Yes, but what was it?
Speaker 2: It's like somebody unsuccessfully tries to carry a bomb onto
Speaker 2: a plane in their shoe. We all take our shoes off, right.
Speaker 2: There's like thirty something school shootings after Columbine and absolutely
Speaker 2: nothing's changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Or the onion article that's going around too now,
Speaker 1: is this is something that can't be prevented, says the
Speaker 1: only country where this kind of thing happens all the time,
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: Huh, I'm paraphrasing, Oh yeah, that's the onion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good stuff, MPa. Keep keep doing the fighting, the
Speaker 1: good fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Go check out, like, just go start reading up
Speaker 2: on it. It's funny how much we just take this
Speaker 2: stuff for granted, but when just start digging just slightly
Speaker 2: beneath the surface at the very least. See this film
Speaker 2: is not yet rated. It's really good. Yeah, really engrossing.
Speaker 2: And you know, for every one hundred documentaries that come out,
Speaker 2: what five of them are like really great? Sure, most
Speaker 2: of them are pretty good, some are terrible. So any
Speaker 2: really good one is worth seeing just in and of itself.
Speaker 1: Agreed.
Speaker 2: If you want to learn more about the MPAA, type
Speaker 2: those letters into the search part housetifforks dot com. And
Speaker 2: I said, search parts, it's time for listener mail. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this wild Parrots. Josh mentioned in the
Speaker 1: Tattoo podcast that he had heard parrots like to hang
Speaker 1: together when free, and I wanted to burst in the
Speaker 1: podcast booth and tell you about the wild pay of
Speaker 1: San Francisco. I'm not going to get into it except
Speaker 1: to say that, over the course of my life, the
Speaker 1: parrots in San Francisco are a sort of living legend
Speaker 1: that one would occaionally get the privilege of spotting now
Speaker 1: and then. However, about three years ago, I moved in
Speaker 1: with my aunt in the little San Francisco suburb of Brisbane,
Speaker 1: and apparently the famous flocks of parrots were also making
Speaker 1: their home there. Since it was warmer, unless windy, these
Speaker 1: parrots were often hanging right outside my bedroom window, which
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing or no, she says, amusing. I say
Speaker 1: it's amazing, but also somewhat annoying, especially since my first
Speaker 1: son was just a little guy then and a very
Speaker 1: light sleeper. And these suckers are loud, that is true,
Speaker 1: they are very loud. Also, guys, I'm sending you the
Speaker 1: link to watch the preview of the two thousand and
Speaker 1: three documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. So I
Speaker 1: didn't know there was a documentary.
Speaker 2: I've heard that. Yeah, I've heard of that before. I
Speaker 2: never knew what it was about.
Speaker 1: Amy. I will check that out.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for writing it. Yeah, thanks a lot. Amy.
Speaker 2: If you have a documentary recommendation, we are always interested
Speaker 2: in those.
Speaker 1: Heck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can tweet them to us at s YSK podcast.
Speaker 2: You can post them on Facebook. Dot com, slash stuff
Speaker 2: you Should Know, and you can send us an email
Speaker 2: to Stuff Podcast at houstuffworks dot com and as always,
Speaker 2: joined us at our home on the web, the Beautiful
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot com.