It’s a good thing we defeated Frisco Breckinridge, and are now able to rest safely at home, knowing that anti-critic terrorists are resting in jail where they belong. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, well, I humbly implore that you listen to Episode #53 of The B-Movies Podcast here on CraveOnline. You’ll find a grand adventure in the offing, wherein William Bibbiani and I enlist the help of Grae Drake, Jessie Maltin, Dave White and Alosno Duralde to take down an evil kidnapper (played convincingly by one Marc Edward Heuck).
As a result of our misadventures, we were unable to discuss some of the news items of the day, including a particularly important one that most certainly warrants comment. The website Film School Rejects (also part of the CraveOnline family) has evidently penned a petition to the White House, imploring an earnest antitrust investigation into the misdeeds of the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA is not-so-secretly moneyed, you see, by the six largest film studios in the world, and are, the petition argues, strictly beholden to the commercial interests of said studios, much to the deference (and consternation) of smaller, independent filmmakers. You can read the petition here. They start the petition with the rather inflammatory phrase “The MPAA must die,” and give a more details account of their grievances on their website here.
Their central argument is that big studios, to this day, use the approval of the MPAA to dictate how well films can be distributed. There was a time, you see, when big film studios once owned theater chains, and would only book their own product. In 1948, a law was passed to prevent this form of monopoly, and theater became autonomous entities. Theaters have remained largely autonomous since then, but, over the last few decades, as media conglomerates merged, grew and mutated, the lines as to what media companies owned as opposed to television networks and theaters and websites began to blur. What does Disney own these days? If you can ever find a list, I’m sure the length of it would be staggering.
Film School Rejects complains that the MPAA is using this well-moneyed cinematic aristocracy to the disadvantage of other non-studio filmmakers whose work would be given wider distribution, more lenient ratings, and more of a chance. Back in the 1950s, you see, filmmakers could often shop their product around directly to local theaters, ensuring an audience. It was during this time that people like Edward D. Wood, Jr. could make their notoriously bad movies and still find an audience. William Castle could make live appearances. Hammer studios would easily be the most successful of this golden age of early exploitation movies. In recent years, though, theaters have been making more and more contracts with big studios, and indie filmmakers have been relegated to various aesthetic ghettos: first the straight-to-video market, and now the online-only market.
I have actually written about the MPAA before, and the widespread ambivalence toward their ubiquitous rating system, and how it is often seen as a form of institutionalized (and often arbitrary) censorship. I wonder, though, how much relevance and power the system still has. As I pointed out in the above link, there is no legal obligation to submit your film to the MPAA for rating. Many filmmakers have complained about the rating their films have received. Films with adult sexual content, for instance, usually get an NC-17 rating, which many theaters will not exhibit. In this regard, the MPAA is using their clout as the distributor of ratings to force certain content to be cut from films. This would change if an NC-17-rated film became a huge hit (can you imagine if such a film was the top-grosser of the year? How would that change the way we look at film ratings?), but until that happens, many filmmakers feel stifled by the MPAA’s insistence that they re-edit their product. Many filmmakers have come forward about how violated they feel by the rating process, and how the standards of content are vague or arbitrary. They finally landed the dream gig of making a big-budget Hollywood film, but they’re not allowed to use the word “f*ck” as often as they would like. The studio decreed it. Is this the MPAA speaking? I would say not. I think it’s the studio’s marketing department trying to hit all four marketing quadrants that enforces most filmmaker censorship. Dealing with studio interference is a long-standing and proud tradition in Hollywood.
But, again, there is no legal need to submit your film for a rating. If your town has an art house theater in it (I live in Los Angeles, so we have many), you’ll find that the bulk of films that play in such places often run films without ratings. International films aren’t often subjected to the same scrutiny. The MPAA may put a rating on the film once it reaches home video, but by then, you’ll likely have a choice of which cut you want to rent. Well, provided you’re not stuck with whatever version is arbitrarily on Netflix. My point is; the rating system is indeed unfair, and it does make for some arbitrary self-censorship, but filmmakers are not beholden to the MPAA unless they’re making a hugely expensive studio product. All it would take is one studio to refuse to submit a big summer release for rating, and the system entire would collapse. It’s bound to happen soon anyway. Imagine if The Avengers was released without a rating. Would that impact its success at all?
The only real force enforcing the MPAA ratings, then, are the theaters themselves, and the distributors of home video. Many of the big-box stores (however paltry their video selection is these days) will now carry NC-17-rated and unrated films. Home video markets are savvy enough to offer multiple cuts of movies, and often will hype such a thing on the video box as a selling point (“8 Extra Minutes of Footage Not Seen in Theaters!”). As unrated films proliferate, the MPAA becomes increasingly stodgy and irrelevant. If you ask any 16-year-old, they’ll tell you about how easy it is to get into an R-rated film without a guardian. Most theater employees don’t really care that 16-year-old are seeing R-rated films, and few will enforce the rating rules. Some might now and again, but, as a longtime theater employee, I can say that we were rarely vigilant. It was only if the film was notoriously violent or sexy that we really kept an eye out. Natural Born Killers, for instance, would not be welcome to a group of unaccompanied 11-year-olds. But I saw many R-rated films before I was 17, and rented plenty from my local video store. The censorship behind the MPAA is merely ceremonial at this point.
And theaters, despite certain contracts are not (at least ideally) beholden directly to studios. Well, some are. The El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Blvd. is owned by Disney, and they show exclusively Disney films. But larger national theater chains like Regal and AMC have contracts with big studios, but will still run smaller films of local filmmakers from time to time. Yes they will. You may have seen one on the marquee from time to time. The Bollywood film that snuck in, or the indie thriller that managed to book a theater for a week. People tend to see the bigger studio films, but I suspect this has less to do with studios stifling creativity, and more with multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns.
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I sense that most filmgoers are becoming savvy to marketing, and will seek out what their friends are talking about. The Human Centipede II made more money than either the Roger Ebert-touted film Trust or the Academy Award-nominated documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front. The Human Centipede II was not rated, and was sought by a certain audience in the areas where it played. The MPAA had nothing to do with it. Films are being distributed online and on Netflix with increasing regularity. Many are bypassing the MPAA altogether.
Film School Rejects wants the system to be fought, and the MPAA to be dismantled. It doesn’t need a fight, and it doesn’t need dismantling. It is slowly dissolving before our eyes. Indie filmmakers are given an increasing number of alternate distribution models. And the enforcers on the front lines of the MPAA warpath are hard-working theater managers and shiftless and indifferent theater employees. This is a non-issue. Here is a technique that most people learn when their teenagers: if you disapprove of something; parents’ rules, church rules, government, cops, etc., you merely dismiss it with a wave of cynical, adolescent hand. In this case, we can fight the MPAA by dismissing them.
