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