Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert (66 page)

Over the years the Classification and Ratings Administration has developed a routine for processing hundreds of movies every year. Members of the board-chosen to represent a cross-section of parents and the moviegoing public-view every film submitted in the MPAA's screening room in Los Angeles. They recommend a rating: G for general audiences, PG for movies where "parental guidance" is suggested, PG-13 for movies where parents are urged to note that some material may be unsuitable for younger viewers, and R for movies off limits to those under seventeen "without a parent or adult guardian."

The board cannot give a film an X rating, because the MPAA never copyrighted the X. But the X can be self-applied by the distributors of a film, and hard-core pornographers are cheerfully willing to label their films X, or even claim the nonexistent XX and XXX ratings.

If movie distributors don't like the rating they've been given, they can appeal. If they lose, they can make trims in hopes of qualifying for an R, they can be released "unrated," or they can self-apply the X (something no mainstream studio or director is willing to do). Several films in recent years have clashed with the guidelines of the R rating. Most of them made cuts to qualify for an R rating, including 9Y Weeks with Kim Basinger, Angel Heart with Mickey Rourke, and Crimes of Passion with Kathleen Turner. (All of these movies were later released on home video in their unedited "original" versions, although viewers were hard-pressed to tell the difference.)

In the spring of 199o, the movie ratings controversy heated up when a number of films found themselves in conflict with the MPAA at the same time. They included not only The Cook, the Thief, His W fe, and Her Lover, but also Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! by the Spanish director Pedro Almodo- var, the shocking but brilliant Henry: Portrait o fa Serial Killer, and Wild Orchid, an erotic drama starring Mickey Rourke and directed by Zalman King, who wrote 9% Weeks.

What was beyond the pale in these movies? One morning I sat with King in his editing room, next to a moviola where he was able to show me two versions of the love scene objected to by the MPAA. It was hard to tell them apart. The scene was shot in lush fleshtones, bathed in a warm light, and showed Mickey Rourke and Carre Otis apparently making love. As is inevitably the case with R-rated movies, the genital areas of the actors were not visible.

"There!" King said at one point. "That overhead shot-they objected to that being at the end of the sequence. So I took it out at the end and moved it to the middle."

As the images flickered on the small editing screen, I saw the unclothed bodies of Rourke and Otis making what seemed to be passionate love. Later, seeing the entire movie, I understood the context: this emotional explosion came after a long buildup in which the two were attracted to each other, yet each had reasons for remaining aloof. The love scene was the payoff for the entire drama.

"I make erotic films," King told me. "That's my stock in trade. I don't have car crashes or violence. All of the drama in this film leads up to the final scene. If they don't let me have that scene, my movie loses its whole reason for existence."

Although the Ratings Board is reluctant to come right out and say what is or isn't acceptable in an R-rated love scene, the practical experience of filmmakers who have been through the ratings process suggests that the board is uncomfortable with graphic thrusting or undulating movements. That's one reason so many movie love scenes are shot from the shoulders up. To get the R rating, apparently, sexual intercourse should involve proximity more than movement.

While it might be unsettling to Rourke and Otis to learn that the intimate continuity of their onscreen lovemaking was being casually rearranged, it was just as surprising for me to see what small differences apparently separated the R rating from the hinterlands of the X. The version the board approved looked a lot like the one they turned down. What was the difference? The board has a policy of never discussing its decisions, which are held behind closed doors. Some industry insiders, however, believe you can actually "wear the board down" by appealing several times, making them sit through a movie over and over again to evaluate small changes. That's an expensive process, however, since it involves making many costly prints of a film.

If a movie like King's is denied an R rating, a director like King usually chooses to reedit it himself. If he doesn't, it may be recut by the studio, since most Hollywood contracts require directors to deliver a movie with a specified rating. Sometimes it's easier to cut than to appeal; going through the appeals process is a risky business since it takes time and may mean a movie misses its targeted opening date.

But some directors take their work so seriously that they fight through the appeals process. One movie which appealed and won was Brian De Palma's Scarface (1983). But most films are rejected. The appeals are held in a screening room in New York City, where movies are shown to a twentytwo-member committee-half of them from the National Association of Theater Owners, half selected by the MPAA. When filmmakers appear before the appeals board, they're asked to make a statement defending their original version, after which the MPAA's position is stated by Richard D. Heffner, head of the Classification and Ratings Administration. Then the filmmaker leaves the room, Heffner stays, and a vote is taken.

"Want to know how long they debated before they took their vote on my movie?" Helen Mirren asked me. "Thirty-five seconds."

There are, no doubt, some people who would believe that was too long, that all "dirty movies" deserve what they get. But freedom of expression is a right which movie directors should possess, just as writers, painters, and j ournalists do, and by creating economic penalties for films it denies an R rating, the MPAA is imposing a form of censorship. It's an irony that the MPAA board was actually started to head off censorship by allowing Hollywood to police itself. Valenti argues, and it is correct, that over the years the movie ratings system has probably prevented more censorship problems than it has created.

But this current controversy comes against the backdrop of a rising national tide of censorship and attacks on free expression. The legal difficulties of the rap group 2 Live Crew and the raging debate over flag burning are but two examples. The question is: whose standards does the MPAA uphold when it rates a movie? I believe its primary constituency is not the parents of America, as Valenti claims, but the moguls of Hollywood.

As someone who has seen virtually every Hollywood movie made over the past two decades, I've noticed that the MPAA's tolerance level for violence has grown steadily more permissive, perhaps under the unstated pressure of the Hollywood studios who pay the MPAA's bills-and who depend on heavy-duty summer action pictures to pay their bills.

These days, sex and nudity seem to be more offensive to the ratings board than violence and profanity. During the same season when the MPAA was throwing up its hands over the Wild Orchid lovemaking shot, it was supplying R ratings to Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall, a hymn of nonstop and extreme violence; to Eddie Murphy's Another 48 Hrs., with its brutal bar brawls and those trademarked Murphy riffs of four-letter words; and to RoboCop IT with its scene of a brain being smashed on the pavement and its twelve-year-old character who is a foul-mouthed killer for a drug kingpin.

There's even sociological evidence to back up my observation, especially as it applies to women. Social researchers Ni Yang of UCLA and Daniel Linz of the University of California at Santa Barbara found in a recent study that R-rated movies actually contain more violence against women than does hard-core pornography. The study, reported in Variety, reduced everything to chilling statistics indicating that women were treated violently about twice as often in R-rated movies as in X-rated ones.

Jack Valenti, the most vocal defender of the ratings system in its current form, is quick to deny charges of censorship, pointing out that the rating system is voluntary.

"If I were a director who made a movie that did not qualify for an R rating, and that movie was important to me, I would go right ahead and release it unrated," Valenti told me recently in Los Angeles.

I replied that when a filmmaker finds that thousands of theaters will not show that unrated film, and countless media outlets will not accept advertising for it-isn't he facing de facto censorship?

"The rating system is designed as an advisory for parents," Valenti said. "It does not and should not take into account anybody's economic situation."

Sometimes, in a debate like this, the critic of the ratings system finds himself defending films not to his personal liking. But that is what freedom of expression is all about.

I am the first to agree that a movie like Wild Orchid is a shallow, silly sex film. But if there are adult filmgoers who want to see it as King made it, that should be their right. Many people would be offended by The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, but it was intended as an offensive film, and art is often intended to shock.

And what about directors of unquestioned importance, who are asked to alter their films to qualify for an R rating? In May of this year, David Lynch's Wild at Heart won the Golden Palm, the top award at the Cannes Film Festival. But it will not be seen by American moviegoers in the same form that it played at Cannes; one disputed shot has been softened by the addition of a cinematic smoke screen.

Martin Scorsese is widely considered to be the greatest American director of his generation. No one would deny the power of his Taxi Driver (1976), and his Raging Bull (1980) was voted by every poll in sight as the single best film of the 198os. But his new film, GoodFellas, also reportedly faced problems with the ratings board.

When Lynch and Scorsese have to take scissors to their films because the MPAA is unwilling to bend on a rating system that needs fixing, it is time for reform.

At the time the ratings system was first created in 1968, there was a category designed to indicate movies for adults only: the infamous X category. In the early years the X was not an automatic mark of shame, and such reputable pictures as Midnight Cowboy, The Killing of Sister George, Candy, A Clockwork Orange, and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (which I wrote) carried the X rating. The early 1970s were boom years for hard-core pornography, however, and soon the X rating came to be exclusively identified with porno movies. No mainstream movie studio, director, or theater chain wanted to have anything to do with it. The last major movie released with an X rating was Last Tango in Paris, in 1972.

In the eighteen years since then, the United States has essentially been the only country in the Western world with no category suggesting that a film is appropriate for adults only. The X rating has become the trademark of pornography. Why didn't the MPAA copyright the X, thus ensuring its proper use as the last stop on a conventional rating scale? "We acted on the advice of lawyers," Valenti told me. "We felt we needed an open-ended system so that we could not be charged with restraint of trade. We don't give you the X. We deny you the R, and what you do then is up to you."

In practice, that means all ordinary Hollywood movies and imports must somehow squeeze into the R rating. If they don't fit, the MPAA offers two choices: release the film without any rating at all, or self-apply the X rating.

These are not practical alternatives for the reasons I've already mentioned: theater chains routinely have leases with shopping malls forbid ding them to play X-rated films, and it's impossible to advertise X or unrated movies in many cities. As a result, a movie that is released outside the ratings system stands little chance of wide distribution.

There is an obvious way out of this dilemma, one proposed by Gene Siskel and myself on our television program as long ago as 1987: create a new A-rating category, for "adults only," and position it between the R and the X. The A would specify that tickets could not be sold to anyone under seventeen. The X rating would still be self-applied, and would continue to indicate hard-core pornography, but now there would be an acceptable, enforceable rating in between for movies that are frankly intended for adults.

The movement for an A rating has picked up considerable support since Siskel and I first proposed it. Members of the National Society of Film Critics recently sent a letter to the MPAA advocating the A, and there's a resolution in the Illinois House of Representatives that would encourage the same. A court fight is also brewing over the rating system. Miramax Films, distributor of The Cook and Tie Me Up!, hired constitutional attorney William Kunstler to spearhead its suit against the MPAA. Although Miramax lost that case, it was a Pyrrhic victory for the MPAA, which was told by the judge its system was arbitrary and ripe for revision.

In his fight against the A rating, Valenti finds himself confronted by critics from both the right and left. Liberals support the A category because it provides a way for directors to express themselves without trying to squeeze their vision into the R guidelines. And conservatives, alarmed by the escalating permissiveness of R-rated movies and the ease with which children can attend them, would like an "adults only" category to isolate movies not intended for young viewers.

When I proposed an A rating during a meeting with Valenti not long ago, he flatly rejected it. "The rating system is a voluntary guide intended for parents," he said piously, "and the nation's parents believe that it works." If you've seen Valenti on a talk show, you've heard him use the same words. He discourages anybody other than himself from speaking for the ratings system, and always uses the same polished sound bites.

Valenti also suggests practical difficulties with enforcing an A rating. Using one of his favorite debating weapons-a list of perversions and deviant behavior that he rattles off like a vice cop-he told me, "How can you draw a line between the A and the X? Between A-rated incest, child molestation, cannibalism, and sadomasochism, and X-rated incest, child molestation, cannibalism, and sadomasochism? How can you say which scenes of child molestation are artistic, and which are pornographic? The members of the rating board are mere human beings. How can you expect them to draw a line like that?"