SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: How the MPAA Works

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Speaker 16 Hey, everybody, Chuck here for another summer movie playlist feed drop.

Speaker 16 Today we're going to be covering how the MPAA works, and this is from June 2014.

Speaker 16 And it delves into the ins and outs of the MPAA and how they decide on rating movies because it's sort of a dark art as far as we're concerned. So check it out.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

Speaker 15 Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry.
But where's Waldo?

Speaker 15 Right over there apparently.

Speaker 16 Man, I wish people could hear the in-between stuff.

Speaker 15 I think Jerry was recording that last one. Oh yeah? I think so.

Speaker 16 She used to give us neat little outtakes, but she doesn't do that anymore. No.

Speaker 16 Those days are long gone.

Speaker 16 They exist in the vault, though. How you doing?

Speaker 15 Not good. No? No.

Speaker 15 I don't know what's wrong with me. I am off today.

Speaker 15 Out of your game? Yeah, it's weird.

Speaker 16 Well, I think this is the perfect podcast to set you straight.

Speaker 15 Why?

Speaker 16 Because it's something that we both have some passion about.

Speaker 16 Against.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 I think anybody who's seen the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated,

Speaker 15 that would be

Speaker 15 very difficult to not

Speaker 15 be persuaded to feel strongly about the MPAA and its practices.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and at least how they do things.

Speaker 15 But we're going to try to be objective.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say up front, I have no problem with rating a film's content so parents can decide whether or not it's appropriate.

Speaker 16 I think it's valuable, but I think there are ways to do it that I don't think the MPAA does. Yes.
So how I just wanted to float that early on.

Speaker 15 Okay. I think that was probably smart.
Okay. Okay.

Speaker 15 I

Speaker 15 don't have kids, so I don't really

Speaker 15 whatever. But I mean, I can understand the value of that kind of thing.

Speaker 16 Yeah, but it gives you an idea. Like, I like having an idea of what I'm about to see, too.

Speaker 15 I feel like I can tell just from watching a trailer or preview seeing a movie poster. I'm pretty

Speaker 15 intuitive when it comes to the

Speaker 15 marketing techniques of movies.

Speaker 16 Yeah, but I think, like, being a a film nerd, it's like,

Speaker 16 is the new Avengers movie going to be rated R? That really tells you something. Of course, it won't be.

Speaker 15 No, it never would be.

Speaker 16 Because PG-13 is

Speaker 16 the strike zone these days.

Speaker 15 It really is. Apparently, PG-13 movies pull in more money than all other ratings combined.
Yeah. And it's a relatively new phenomenon.
You want to talk about its origin? Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 15 So back in 1984, a man named named Steven Spielberg

Speaker 15 had two movies out. Who? Steven Spielberg.
Right.

Speaker 15 He directed one, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and he produced another, Gremlins. Yeah.

Speaker 15 And both of them caught, he caught a lot of heat from both of them.

Speaker 16 Sure, Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene specifically.

Speaker 15 Yeah, but also the snake, the live snake... at the feast thing.
Yeah, yeah. The snake babies, the eyeballs, all that stuff.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 And then with gremlins, it was just downright terrifying in a lot of different places, especially if you're a kid. And the reason he caught heat was because both of those movies were rated PG.

Speaker 15 And so

Speaker 15 Spielberg went to the MPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America, and said, oh, let's do something about this. Because these clearly aren't our movies.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 But they apparently aren't PG movies either. So maybe we should come up with something in between.
And PG-13 was born.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and this was before he had

Speaker 16 all the sway in the world. He was influential, but it wasn't like Spielberg today, who could have just waved his wand and made it happen.

Speaker 15 Yeah, but I think even at the time... He was important.

Speaker 15 Yeah, there were very few directors at that time who could have gotten something like that done. Yeah.
Too.

Speaker 15 So that's where PG-13 came from. And

Speaker 15 that, like you said, that's the strike zone now.

Speaker 15 And the reason why is because that is the kind of movie that caters to Young teenage boys who apparently are the most successful at getting girls to go to movies with them. Yeah, so if you can get

Speaker 15 a movie rated PG-13,

Speaker 15 you're going to make a bunch of money.

Speaker 16 Yeah, plus it makes sense. It's right there in the middle.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 But the problem is, is it's become a means of almost advertising that rating. Rather than cautioning parents, it's a way of attracting the audience.
Yeah, true.

Speaker 15 It's like this isn't some kid's PG movie. This is as close to an R movie as you can get in.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and I think filmmakers try to achieve that rating by either scaling back their R-rated movie or juicing up their PG movie.

Speaker 15 Or adding more violence. Because apparently, PG-13 movies

Speaker 15 have tripled in violence over the last few decades.

Speaker 15 And they now have, according to one study, more violence than their R-rated counterparts.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and different kinds of violence that you didn't used to see.

Speaker 15 Yeah. You know?

Speaker 16 All right, I guess we should go back in time a little bit. Let's.
Is it Wayback Machine?

Speaker 15 Sure. Let's go.
Let's go way back in time in Hollywood.

Speaker 16 All right, it's 1922. Hollywood and Vine is a viable intersection in Hollywood at the time, unlike now,

Speaker 15 although people are going to say, no, they built that area back up.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 16 And that is when the MPA was born in the early 1920s. Yeah.
And at the time, it was up to local authorities or your state or your municipality to either stamp something as moral or immoral.

Speaker 16 There were no ratings on movies. And thanks to a guy named Will Hayes, who was the first president of the MPAA he installed the Hayes Code and said

Speaker 15 you're either going to pass or fail it's either going to be stamped immoral or moral right and the reason Will Hayes who was the MPAA president

Speaker 15 came up with the Hayes code which was really extensive yeah it was like if you if you talk about the government it always has to be good

Speaker 15 sexuality has to be like repressed and just basically

Speaker 15 how you think about all movies from like the 30s and forties just squeaky clean basically sure like the the division between good and evil is very clearly defined and the good guy always wins uh and if you didn't fall into that haze code like you said your movie would be stamped immoral but the whole reason he came up with this code was because local municipalities could

Speaker 15 pass their own obscenity laws and that could be bad for business.

Speaker 16 So it's a not even get your film exhibited. Right.

Speaker 15 So remember in the the ACLU episode where we were talking about

Speaker 15 that one movie, that New York, just the Catholics said, no, you can't show that here. And the ACLU went to work getting the Catholics beaten in court.

Speaker 16 Right, even though it was just a bad movie.

Speaker 15 It had something to do with.

Speaker 16 Well, I mean, it did, but it shouldn't have been shown because it was so terrible.

Speaker 15 Was it bad? I don't remember.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean, it was supposed to be not very good.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 15 But it happened. Like, that kind of thing happened a lot.
Like, local towns said, no, no, we're not going to show that movie. So Hayes figured out if Hollywood policed itself, then they could control

Speaker 15 what movies came out and therefore everybody could make a bunch of money.

Speaker 16 That's right.

Speaker 15 And that's the point of the MPAA. They're the lobbying arm of six major Hollywood studios.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 They're, they're. They work for them.
Yeah. Well, yeah, that's one way to say it.

Speaker 15 But they, and it's just those six too, isn't it?

Speaker 16 Uh, well,

Speaker 16 yeah, I mean, you, there's definitely an argument these days that independent filmmakers have a much rougher time with the NPAA. Yeah.

Speaker 16 But most of the indies, too, are eventually distributed by the majors anyway. I got you.
You know what I'm saying? Okay.

Speaker 16 So flash forward a bit in our Wayback Machine to the 1950s, things changed a little bit after World War II.

Speaker 16 And people,

Speaker 16 I guess the easiest way to say it is people loosened up a little bit and didn't mind certain elements in their entertainment any longer.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 16 A big example this article uses, Frank Sinatra got an Oscar nomination for playing a heroin addict in The Man with a Golden Arm. And that couldn't have happened in the 1940s.

Speaker 15 No, millions of people hadn't died in World War II yet. That's right.
I imagine that kind of loosens you up as far as

Speaker 15 seeing curse words and stuff in movies goes.

Speaker 16 Yeah, like that's not a big deal. Like, World War II is a big deal.
Right. Get your haunches down.

Speaker 15 Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 15 That was the big one, the big first crack to the Hays Code. Yeah.
And then there were, I think that, you said he won an Oscar, right?

Speaker 16 Yeah, it was a really good movie.

Speaker 15 That kind of opened the floodgate so that by the end of the 50s, you got some like at Hot, and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon are dressed like women hitting on Marilyn Monroe. Yeah.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 at that point, it was pretty obvious the Hays Code was dead.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean, they weren't passing the code, but they were still getting released. So once something is

Speaker 16 subverted like that, it's dead in the water. Right.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 there was a that was fine for a little while. I think the Hayes Code just kind of fell to the wayside and people were releasing movies without any kind of moral or immoral stamp.

Speaker 15 But the rating system as we understand it today hadn't come about yet. Yeah.
So it's kind of a limbo period until 1968.

Speaker 15 And a

Speaker 15 store owner in New York with the last name of Ginsburg got busted for selling nudie mags to 16-year-old boys.

Speaker 15 And he took it all the way to the Supreme Court

Speaker 15 saying,

Speaker 15 you

Speaker 15 can't say anything about this. There's federal laws about obscenity, not local laws.
And the Supreme Court said, you know what?

Speaker 15 We really think it's up to local municipalities to decide what they want their minors exposed to or not.

Speaker 15 That got Hollywood's attention because all of a sudden, local municipalities could decide whether or not they wanted to show movies to minors or not.

Speaker 15 So what was old became new again, and Jack Valenti, who was in charge of the MPAA, said, we need another system of self, another self-policing system.

Speaker 15 And he came up with the rating system that we have today.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and he,

Speaker 16 I mean, Jack Valenti was the head of the MPA for close to 40 years. And he

Speaker 16 initially,

Speaker 16 the intention was to stop censorship because he feared that the movies were going to start being censored locally. And so I think the origins of the MPA's rating system were

Speaker 16 art-centered.

Speaker 15 Art-centered, but also money-centered. Because, again,

Speaker 15 if you have town A

Speaker 15 showing the movie, but towns B through L deciding that the movie is obscene and not showing it, then you're losing that money in B through L. So what Valenti came up with was this idea that

Speaker 15 let us tell you what is appropriate for minors or not, what movie is, and we'll just make a simple rating system. Yeah.
G, P, G, R, or X.

Speaker 15 The old X.

Speaker 16 Yeah. And triple X, which wasn't even formally a rating.
It was just a marketing tool?

Speaker 15 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Because three X's, that's like, whoa.

Speaker 15 I wonder if anybody ever came out with one with four X's.

Speaker 16 Yeah, or double X even. Yeah.
Like, yeah, we cut out that one part, so we're going to take a rate.

Speaker 16 Yeah, Christian, our colleague here, wrote a great blog post about the

Speaker 16 former X-rated movie.

Speaker 15 Is that right? Yeah. I'll have to check that out.
Yeah, it's good. On Brainstuff for Stuff of Genius.

Speaker 16 On the Brainstuff blog earlier this year, and you actually recommended it on your blog.

Speaker 15 The X rating? Yeah, the best

Speaker 15 I recommend this week. Yeah, I remember recommending one of his things.
I just don't remember that one. It was good.

Speaker 16 I thought about asking him in here, but then I thought, nah, we got it.

Speaker 15 Nice.

Speaker 16 So, yeah, back then it was G through X.

Speaker 16 And,

Speaker 16 well, we'll talk about how that changed. Maybe after this message break.

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Speaker 16 All right, so no longer do we have x-ray to movies. Now we have something.
I guess we should just go through what these ratings mean today in 2014. Okay.

Speaker 16 So you've got your G.

Speaker 15 G's always been G. General audience.

Speaker 16 Anyone can see it. Yes.
And that's your family cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 16 Then you've got PG. That means no drug use.

Speaker 16 Maybe a little violence because as we'll learn, the MPA has less problems with violence and more problems with language and sex.

Speaker 15 Huge criticism.

Speaker 16 Huge criticism.

Speaker 16 PG-13, which we've, you know, kind of been through.

Speaker 16 Then you've got your R, and that is no one under 17. This is a suggestion that no one over 17 be admitted without a parent.

Speaker 15 And these aren't laws, though.

Speaker 16 That's one thing that's important to point out. Those are suggestions, and then theaters have policies.

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 15 Let's kind of dig into that. So none of this is legally binding.
No. None of them are anything more than recommendations.

Speaker 15 They're basically saying that this movie has X amount of profanity or X amount of nudity or lacks any drug use or something like that.

Speaker 15 And so, for what the MPAA thinks the average moral compass of the average American thinks about these different things like sex, drugs, nudity, all that stuff, this movie falls into this rating.

Speaker 15 And again, it's not enforceable. You don't even need to have a rating to release a movie.

Speaker 15 But if you want to get your movie in theaters, there's basically no theater chain out there right now, no major theater chain out there right now, that will show an unrated movie.

Speaker 16 Yeah, it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film to the MPA ratings board.

Speaker 15 But it's de facto.

Speaker 16 But you have to do it.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 16 That's the rub is that they say it's voluntary, but you actually have to pay a fee to submit your movie if you ever want to have it shown in theaters.

Speaker 15 Right, and the fee is anywhere from like $25,000 for a big budget movie to $750 for a short. Yeah.

Speaker 15 And so

Speaker 15 you submit your movie. Well, we'll get into it in a second.
Let's talk some more about the rest of the ratings.

Speaker 16 Yeah, well, there's only one more, and that's NC17, which replaced X. And that means this was in 1990.
And it basically means that it's for adults only. And you should not come in if you're under 18.

Speaker 15 Right. And it also means these days that it's foreign or about lesbian or gays.

Speaker 15 Basically. Yeah, not fully, but sure.
It's pretty close. Yeah.

Speaker 15 And NC17, the first movie to come out with that was Henry in June. Yeah.
Not to be confused with Benny in June.

Speaker 15 And it basically sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh, this is X now. Right.
NC17, if you jumble it all together, it looks like X.

Speaker 15 And the whole reason they came out with NC17 was to replace X because X was associated exclusively with pornography in the minds of moviegoers.

Speaker 16 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 16 All right, so let's get into this.

Speaker 16 The actual ratings board, there's the MPAA and then working for the MPAA is the Classification and Ratings Administration, CARA.

Speaker 16 And uh CARA doesn't say whether your movie stinks or not.

Speaker 16 CARA is eight to thirteen people, and they are called raiders, and they are overseen by a senior raider, and they sit down and watch these movies and take copious notes on what they think

Speaker 16 based on their standards is uh

Speaker 16 I don't want to say offensive, but just noteworthy.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 16 Like maybe they're not offended, but they think the average mom and Sheboygan might be offended.

Speaker 15 Right. Supposedly.
Which is a kind of a thing because the whole rating system, as you just kind of pointed out, is subjective.

Speaker 16 Totally subjective. They supposedly

Speaker 16 here here's the other rub is it's all secret. Right.
You can you can find out a federal judge's name and address, but you can't find out who a raider is for your films. It's all conducted in private.

Speaker 16 None of the stuff is released. And that's one of the big rubs in that documentary and with filmmakers in general, is it's all done behind closed doors.
There's never any explanations provided.

Speaker 16 These people are supposed to have kids between ages of five and 17, but many of them do not. Right.
Either have kids at all or have kids that are older than 18.

Speaker 16 It basically frees them up from any accountability

Speaker 16 to do this all in private and in secrecy.

Speaker 15 And until that movie

Speaker 15 by Kirby, what is Kirby's last name? Henry and June? No. No.

Speaker 15 The documentary.

Speaker 16 Oh, oh, yeah. This film is not yet rated?

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Until Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated came out, like, all of this stuff was just

Speaker 15 conjecture in Hollywood legend. Yeah.
He was the first one to really basically, he tailed these people, tailed them to lunch

Speaker 15 to find out who they were and eavesdrop on them yeah and like did some digging and found like these anonymous people did not fall into the requirements that the MPAA said they did and so not only was it in secret it was

Speaker 15 it was fraudulent basically this rating system

Speaker 15 so

Speaker 15 according to the standards you submit your film this group of people, this anonymous group of people watch it. They rate it.

Speaker 15 Then they come together and vote on a rating, and then they pass their

Speaker 15 vote along to a senior rater who talks to the movie's distributor, director, or producer, and says, Here's the rating, here's why we rated it like this. And then you're faced with a choice.

Speaker 15 You can accept the rating,

Speaker 15 you can edit your film as per the

Speaker 15 CARA's recommendations.

Speaker 16 Take out these bad words, cut this sex scene a little early, leave all the violence.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Or you can reject the rating and just release your movie as unrated.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Which, well,

Speaker 16 you can try to release it, but since no one will show it, it's really sort of a misnomer. Right.

Speaker 15 But it's becoming increasingly a thing. Again, you need the rating to get your movie shown in movie theaters.
Yeah. But what happens if you don't care if your movie comes out in theaters?

Speaker 16 Video on demand?

Speaker 15 Yeah, or just releasing it to the internet?

Speaker 16 Now, I'm curious about that, how that's going to change the landscape.

Speaker 15 Well, right now, it's a huge threat to the MPAA because all of the power they wield is found in this rating system.

Speaker 16 And if for theaters, yes,

Speaker 15 if no one's going to theaters, then the MPAA loses all of that power, which is a big deal, especially now because the MPAA is needed more than ever as a lobbying group because of online piracy, which we'll talk about some more.

Speaker 15 So it's a very precarious time for the MPAA right now. And it's a terrible time for them to be under as much scrutiny and public attack and critique as they are.

Speaker 15 So it's, I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way, and their trunk is flailing and they're honking.

Speaker 16 That is true. One thing I should point out is I said it is that there's no accountability.
That's what the MPA says is the good thing about the secrecy is that it frees them up. That anonymity does.

Speaker 16 It frees them up from accountability.

Speaker 16 I just don't agree.

Speaker 15 Right. Okay.
So

Speaker 15 if you want to appeal, there was apparently a change made in response to Kirby Dick's movie,

Speaker 15 the documentary. Before, if you were appealing your rating,

Speaker 15 which is very difficult,

Speaker 15 it almost never was done.

Speaker 16 You never won, that's for sure. Right.

Speaker 15 And when you were appealing, you couldn't reference any other film.

Speaker 15 It was totally done in a vacuum, which is pretty preposterous.

Speaker 16 Yeah, like, that's the only way to be able to tell us, like, wait a minute, if you said this about this, then why not this for my movie? Right.

Speaker 15 Which meant that there was no real standard

Speaker 15 that you could point to. Or there were standards you could point to, they just wouldn't be considered.

Speaker 16 Yeah, or at the very least, if they do have written standards, they don't release them, so you don't even know what they are. Right.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 the MPAA is

Speaker 15 they've got their rating system. They've got the appeals process.

Speaker 16 Which was also in secret, unless that's changed, right?

Speaker 16 I think I think the appeals board, not only was the appeals board in secret, but they weren't even just raiders. They were people from the industry.
Right.

Speaker 15 And the theater owners association. Exactly.
Whereas the people who are raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the movie industry and are just like average ordinary parents.

Speaker 16 Representing

Speaker 16 Euro

Speaker 16 Middle America, we'll just call it.

Speaker 16 Even though I think that's insulting.

Speaker 15 The thing is, though, is a lot of people criticize the MPAA and say these raiders are

Speaker 15 really representing the six major studios who rake in 95% of the $10.9 billion made in the United States

Speaker 15 in theaters alone. Just ticket sales, not DVD or anything like that.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 And that's what the MPAA does in addition to raiding. They are, like we said, the lobby arm for these six studios.

Speaker 16 That's right. And they,

Speaker 16 I guess we should talk about piracy now, huh? That's one of their other big,

Speaker 16 besides from raiding movies, they are heavy in the lobby against,

Speaker 16 well, especially now with online piracy because the digital distribution network is, it seems like the way forward as far as distribution goes.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 16 Like it's the few, it's not the future, it's the present and the future.

Speaker 15 And the NPAA has a, they're accused of basically trying to quell new technology

Speaker 15 by just saying, well, let's just keep people from peer-to-peer file sharing in total so that they can't steal movies in part.

Speaker 15 And if you go back to the early 80s, Jack Valenti was known to have railed and lobbied against the legality of VCRs.

Speaker 16 People are just going to be recording things and handing them out to their friends.

Speaker 15 Exactly.

Speaker 15 So there was a, the NPA has a long history of basically like just doing anything it can to stifle innovation in order to protect the profits of these big movie studios.

Speaker 15 The other problem with them lobbying um

Speaker 15 uh in favor of these six movie studios is that they inherently have a conflict of interest against the studios that are

Speaker 15 not part of these six that they represent,

Speaker 15 but whose movies they still rate. Right.
So they've been accused of um more scrupulously or scrutinously rating the movies of rival studios or foreign studios when assigning a a rating.

Speaker 16 Well, and that's why filmmakers call consistently for transparency. It's it's I don't think there are many filmmakers out there saying there should be no rating.

Speaker 16 We should just maybe some, like Lars von Trier, you know, or Werner Herzog. Right.
They're probably like, no ratings at all. Yeah.
But I think they just want transparency.

Speaker 16 Like open it up and let everyone know how this is all done, who these people are, and give us an idea on what in the world we're submitting to

Speaker 15 voluntarily, quote unquote.

Speaker 16 Pretty interesting.

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Speaker 15 So you were talking about online piracy.

Speaker 15 And with digital distribution being a big deal now,

Speaker 15 the MPA is needed more than ever because they have to lobby Congress to fight online piracy at a time when more and more people are distributing online and going around the MPAA.

Speaker 15 So it's losing its power, but it needs its power more than ever. So like we said, it's a precarious time for the MPAA.

Speaker 15 And they tried a few things. They were successful with the

Speaker 15 what was the first one in 2000? The Digital

Speaker 16 SOPA?

Speaker 15 No, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Oh, right.
Which basically,

Speaker 15 up until then, it wasn't a federal crime to share movies. on peer-to-peer networks.
Right. That one did it.
And they got that passed. The MPAA lobbied and got that passed.

Speaker 16 Yeah. They've cracked down on camcorder recording.
Yeah. Like when you're in New York City and someone has that brand new copy of Godzilla on a video cassette for you.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 That's because if you've seen Seinfeld, someone went and sat in that theater with a camera recorder and just made a stupid... awful quality pirate version.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and it says that those are the most common. I guess I kind of believe that.
They're also the worst quality.

Speaker 15 Like sometimes people will like get up and move in front of the camera like to go to the bathroom or something and yeah it's uh I've never seen one but I think they're terrible yeah um

Speaker 15 much I don't want to say more common but probably more common these days are like copies of screeners yeah like they send out DVDs to everybody who's members of the academy oh yeah to vote on movies yeah and so around Oscar time or before Oscar time it seems like the internet gets flooded with way more high quality copies of these major movies that are up for awards.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I think now they have,

Speaker 16 thanks to the NPA, have

Speaker 16 something coded to your name now on your copy.

Speaker 15 So like they'll know who leaked it or whatever?

Speaker 16 I think so. Yeah,

Speaker 15 I'm not surprised by that.

Speaker 15 Apparently, if you want to show Frozen at your church,

Speaker 15 you better have a public performance license because it is illegal to show a movie outside of your home.

Speaker 16 Yeah, that surprised me, but there are a lot of, especially in the summertime, a a lot of community screenings. Like every city now has,

Speaker 16 you know, Atlanta shows them in, I think, at Oakland Cemetery.

Speaker 16 Some other places in New York, they have them all over the place.

Speaker 15 Sure.

Speaker 16 And technically, yeah, they're supposed to have a license to do so. I'm sure they do, the big ones.

Speaker 15 Yeah, the big ones, I'm sure, do.

Speaker 16 But like at your community pool when you want to show E.T.

Speaker 15 and

Speaker 15 the feds could come kick the gate down around the pool. I bet

Speaker 15 everybody.

Speaker 16 I bet they don't love HBO these days. Because, you know, HBO, Go.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 People steal that. They're just like, hey, dude, what's your login?

Speaker 15 Oh, right, yeah.

Speaker 16 And HBO came out and they're like, who cares?

Speaker 15 Yeah, people are watching it.

Speaker 16 Yeah, like, go watch True Detective. Maybe you'll sign up for HBO because you liked it.
Or maybe you'll just support the show, period, on social media. Yeah.
Even though you're getting it for free.

Speaker 16 Like, we're making enough money, basically.

Speaker 15 Yes, and that's something that a lot of people say, you know, film industry, we don't really feel that bad for you. Yeah.
Sean Austin, sit down. Because you guys made $10.9 billion

Speaker 15 in America in ticket sales alone in 2013.

Speaker 15 We don't feel that bad about this whole conundrum that the MPAA is facing.

Speaker 16 What's Sean Aston's deal? Is he his

Speaker 16 voices? Yeah.

Speaker 15 Yeah. Oh, okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 I don't think I knew that.

Speaker 15 Yeah, he was,

Speaker 15 I can't remember the, there was like a whole kind of push, an anti-piracy push a few years back.

Speaker 16 And he was the face of it.

Speaker 15 Part of it, yeah. Yeah, and he looked really mad about things, too.
Dooty.

Speaker 15 But speaking of piracy, I remember there was a story that came out recently. It was, if you think about it, at first it's like, wah, wah.
But then if you really kind of

Speaker 15 lend it some thought, it's really disturbing. Yeah.

Speaker 15 There was a report of

Speaker 15 prisoners at a prison being shown pirated movies, and some of the prisoners were there for pirating movies. Oh, wow.
And

Speaker 15 really, think about the injustice behind that. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Like, that's just crazy, town. Imagine if you've been, like, selling counterfeit furs, and you go to prison, and all of the

Speaker 15 guards are wearing counterfeit fur coats.

Speaker 16 That'd be a pretty swing in prison.

Speaker 15 It'd be weird, but it would also be unjust. Yeah.
Yeah. True.
But in relation to this, it's just more and more widespread.

Speaker 15 Every day, it feels like it's a losing battle, I think, that the MPAA is fighting right now.

Speaker 16 Well, I think I read somewhere today that I think they might release a few of the Raiders' names per film,

Speaker 16 not all like 13. Right.
But I need to

Speaker 16 look that up again because I don't know. I don't see

Speaker 16 why releasing a three out of 13 names does anybody any good.

Speaker 15 It does zero good.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 15 And speaking of doing zero good,

Speaker 15 there's kind of a new

Speaker 15 to the rating system that they have now. It's called Check the Box.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 it's basically a brief description of why a movie is like PG-13. Yeah.
So it'll say like intense sci-fi action or something like that.

Speaker 16 Some drug use.

Speaker 15 Yeah, that kind of thing.

Speaker 15 And some critics of the MPAA say

Speaker 15 it's just basically like shooting a laser beam into like a 15-year-old boy's brain. Yeah.
Like brief nudity. Come see it.
Right. TG13.
Check it out, kid. Yeah.

Speaker 15 And I think a lot of people are looking at it like it's just kind of a disingenuous advertisement, cynical advertisement, because

Speaker 15 the MPAA is accused of not regulating or even potentially directly marketing to

Speaker 15 kids under the age of the movies that are being advertised.

Speaker 15 So like you're seeing a lot of ads for like R-rated movies on websites that are like very popular among like the 17 and under crowd. Yeah.

Speaker 15 There's a lot of tie-ins for PG-13 movies with like kids' toys for kids who

Speaker 15 are under 13.

Speaker 15 And so there's like this idea that there's the MPAA is supposedly serving America's moral compasses. Yeah.

Speaker 15 But really at the same time, they're undermining that morality that they're supposedly defending

Speaker 15 by marketing and exploiting kids.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 16 That'd be like a cigarette company having a cartoon animal as their mascot.

Speaker 15 Can you imagine? That'd be weird.

Speaker 16 Well, one thing about the

Speaker 16 subjectivity of it and the fact that it is a closed book and filmmakers don't even know

Speaker 16 how to tailor their movie to achieve a certain rating.

Speaker 16 I mean, to within a certain degree, but they've learned how to manipulate it because there is no set standard by, if you watch that film is not yet rated, and you've heard plenty of stories over the years about filmmakers intentionally putting in things that they never intend to be in the final movie

Speaker 16 just to sort of distract from some of the other things. So they'll shoot something kind of really outrageous

Speaker 16 to get the MPA's Raiders haunches up. and what they were never going to keep that part anyway.
Right. So they're subverting the system because there is no set standard.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 And they're just

Speaker 15 the stuff they want to keep in is comparatively

Speaker 16 more palatable. And if you don't have the set standard where you can go and, I wonder what those sheets look like on the interior, you know? I mean, that's the great mystery.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 Surely they have their own interior standards.

Speaker 15 They're not just like, oh, watch it and see what you think. Well, they have group discussions, too.

Speaker 16 Man, I'd love to sit down on those.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 I read...

Speaker 15 Another criticism of the MPAA is that the difference between PG-13 movies and our movies these days is the the profanity and the sexuality.

Speaker 15 That they're similar in violence, if not more violent, in PG-13 movies, and that this is kind of messed up. That the MPAA has very little problem with violence,

Speaker 15 but when it comes to bad words or sexuality of almost any nature, except for women being objectified and men being gratified,

Speaker 15 then the MPAA suddenly puckers up.

Speaker 16 Well, yeah, in any a woman achieving receiving sexual gratification or a homosexual couple NC 17.

Speaker 15 Yeah. Virtually like guaranteed or depending on how they do it, R, if it's coming out of like one of the major studios.

Speaker 16 So in other words, a man can receive pleasure from a woman.

Speaker 16 And of course it's scrutinized somewhat because any kind of sex is more heavily scrutinized than violence. Right.
But if a woman does, like you said, or if it's a gay couple, it's all over. So

Speaker 16 homophobic, misogynistic,

Speaker 16 you decide.

Speaker 15 Right. And

Speaker 15 fetishistic of violence.

Speaker 15 You know?

Speaker 16 Yeah, like here's one example. There's a great article called Don't Expect Any Major Changes to the MPA rating system in 2014.

Speaker 16 And it's basically Chris Dodd, who's the new head in the gang, digging in and saying, you know what?

Speaker 16 We

Speaker 16 talk to your average parents and we poll them, and this is what they want.

Speaker 15 But they never released.

Speaker 16 No, none of those studies are released. None of those conversations are released.

Speaker 16 A movie like Philomena, which you saw, was rated R.

Speaker 16 Yeah, it was about a lady looking for her long-lost son.

Speaker 15 It was so far from an R movie, it was ridiculous.

Speaker 16 Yeah, but it had a couple of F-bombs in it.

Speaker 16 So they cut those out and they bring it to a PG-13. And you might think, who cares? Cut the F-bombs, make it PG-13, but there's something bigger going on here, you know?

Speaker 15 Yeah, there's a great AV Club article about

Speaker 15 how just totally out of step a lot of the ratings are. And they have 15 movies listed and basically talk about their ratings.

Speaker 15 Like the first one, they talk about once. Yeah.
That romantic,

Speaker 15 it wasn't like a romantic comedy, was it?

Speaker 16 No, I would say it was

Speaker 16 just a modern-day romance told through music. Right.
It wasn't a musical, but there were a lot of musical numbers.

Speaker 15 Highly inoffensive.

Speaker 16 Love story.

Speaker 15 Yeah. Very sweet movie.

Speaker 15 It had the same rating as Hostile 2, which is basically Torture Porn.

Speaker 15 They both got the same rating.

Speaker 16 Yeah,

Speaker 16 we should read this first line from the A.B. Club.
In early summer of 2007, two films were released with R ratings.

Speaker 16 One featured a scene where a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling, while another naked woman slashes her with a Sith and bathes in her blood.

Speaker 16 The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together, falling in love, and opting not to act on it. Like, there was never any sex scene.
They didn't even get together, really. No.

Speaker 16 They're both rated R.

Speaker 15 Both rated R.

Speaker 15 Because of profanity.

Speaker 16 Rushmore rated R for the

Speaker 16 scene at the end where Max is putting on the play, the Vietnam play,

Speaker 16 and there is a shot of a couple of little kids looking at on the set. There's some Playboy Center folds up in the locker, like on the Vietnam set.

Speaker 16 And it shows these little kids looking at those, like a 12-year-old would probably do.

Speaker 15 And it got an R for that. Got an R for that.

Speaker 15 Happiness,

Speaker 15 Todd Solins, one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah.

Speaker 15 They tried to give it an NC17 rating, and he said, you know what? I'm not cutting anything. You can just go

Speaker 15 take a long walk off a short pier, is what I think he famously said to them. Yeah.
And he released his movie as Unrated. Oh, really? Yep.

Speaker 16 I don't think I knew that.

Speaker 15 A way to go, Todd Solins.

Speaker 16 Or if you're looking at some serious homophobia, the great 1989 movie, Longtime Companion,

Speaker 16 features no real sex acts at all. Nothing explicit.

Speaker 16 In fact, the A.V. Club says it could show on network TV today with just a few alterations.

Speaker 16 But it was about a gay couple. And

Speaker 16 so it got an NC17.

Speaker 15 Yeah, there was something called Afternoon Delight, which was

Speaker 15 a movie about a woman who hires a gigolo. Yeah.
And it apparently is heavy on the

Speaker 15 woman receiving sexual gratification. It got an R rating.
Yeah. Despite...
And it got an R rating after apparently the director cut a lot of stuff out.

Speaker 15 And the director said, what the hey?

Speaker 15 After Wolf of Wall Street came out.

Speaker 16 Like, have you seen this movie?

Speaker 15 With some very graphic, apparent sex scenes between a man and a woman. Yeah.
But Leonardo DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most. So it's fine.
It's an R. Right.
Blue is the warmest color.

Speaker 16 Yeah, last year that a teenage lesbian love story.

Speaker 15 NC 17.

Speaker 16 Yep. Got a lot of attention.
And there were some theaters that allowed

Speaker 16 high school age kids to go see that anyway.

Speaker 15 Because, again, this isn't law. It's not binding.
It's up to the theaters.

Speaker 16 Yeah, it's just so strange that such a small group of people have such influence on such a large industry.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 the more you dig into it, the more conflicts of interest arise, and the more arbitrary the standards become, the more blood-boiling it is.

Speaker 15 I highly recommend you go read some stuff like Rated R for Ridiculous by Kirby Dick,

Speaker 15 his little op-ed about the MPAA,

Speaker 15 that one U.S. News and World Report article you wrote or suggested was good.

Speaker 16 I wish I wrote it.

Speaker 15 Had you been,

Speaker 15 there would have been used correctly.

Speaker 16 Oh, did they misuse it?

Speaker 15 What?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I know. That's terrible.

Speaker 16 So the MPA will defend themselves, and they say that there is no such bias, and that we all these

Speaker 16 objectionable scenes are rated on the graphic quality and how graphic it is.

Speaker 16 But if you just look at the,

Speaker 16 you'd have to be a dummy not to see these correlations. Right.

Speaker 16 And the fact that they don't seem to care that much about violence in this age where,

Speaker 15 I don't know, does it influence people to go shoot up a school?

Speaker 16 Who knows?

Speaker 15 Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going around?

Speaker 16 Yes, but what was it?

Speaker 15 It's like somebody unsuccessfully tries to carry a bomb onto a plane in their shoe. We all take our shoes off.
Oh, right.

Speaker 15 There's like 30-something school shootings after Columbine, and absolutely nothing's changed. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Or the Onion article that's going around too now is

Speaker 16 this is something that can't be prevented says the only country where this kind of thing happens all the time. Something like that.

Speaker 16 I'm paraphrasing.

Speaker 15 Oh, yeah. That's the onion.

Speaker 16 Yeah, good stuff, MPA.

Speaker 16 Keep doing the fight in the good fight.

Speaker 15 Yeah, go check out, like, just go start reading up on it. It's funny how much we just take this stuff for granted.

Speaker 15 But when just start digging just slightly beneath the surface, at the very least, see, this film is not yet rated. It's really good.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 Really engrossing. And, you know, for every 100 documentaries that come out, what, five of them are, like, really great.
Sure. Most of them are pretty good.
Some are terrible.

Speaker 15 So any really good one is worth seeing just in and of itself. Agreed.

Speaker 15 If you want to learn more about the MPAA, type those letters into the search bar at housediforks.com. And I said search bar, so it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 16 I'm going to call this wild parrots.

Speaker 16 Josh mentioned in the tattoo podcast that he had heard parrots like to hang together when free. And I wanted to burst in the podcast booth and tell you about the wild parrots of San Francisco.

Speaker 16 I'm not going to get into it except to say that over the course of my life, the parrots in San Francisco were a sort of living legend that one would occasionally get the privilege of spotting now and then.

Speaker 16 However, about three years ago, I moved in with my aunt in the little San San Francisco suburb of Brisbane, and apparently the famous flocks of parrots were also making their home there since it was warmer and less windy.

Speaker 16 These parrots were often hanging right outside my bedroom window, which is pretty amazing. Or no, she says amusing.

Speaker 16 I say it's amazing, but also somewhat annoying, especially since my first son was just a little guy then and a very light sleeper, and these suckers are loud. That is true.
They are very loud.

Speaker 16 Also, guys, I'm sending you the link to watch the preview of the 2003 documentary, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. So, I didn't know that was a documentary.

Speaker 15 I've heard that. I've heard of that before.
I never knew what it was about.

Speaker 16 Amy, I will check that out. Thank you.
Thank you for writing it.

Speaker 15 Yeah, thanks a lot, Amy.

Speaker 15 If you have a documentary recommendation, we are always interested in those. Heck yeah.
You can tweet them to us at SYSK Podcast. You can post them on facebook.com/slash stuffy shouldn't know.

Speaker 15 And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, the beautiful stuffyushouldknow.com.

Speaker 1 For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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