Oct. 3 Marks the Spot for Movie Showdown : Ratings: Universal will appeal the X given to ‘Henry & June’ next month. Theater owners are said to balk at a new category.

As the controversy over the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s movie ratings system edges toward a potentially noisy showdown on Oct. 3, the date of Universal Pictures’ appeal of the X rating given Phil Kaufman’s “Henry & June,” a new enemy--or at least a new player--has moved into the frame.

According to sources involved in discussions about the MPAA’s besieged X rating, language for a new adults-only category was agreed upon at a meeting in Los Angeles last month, but when MPAA President Jack Valenti presented the new rating to exhibitors, they balked.

“We thought it was done, we thought we had a new rating,” said one studio executive who was present at the meeting. “Then the exhibitors sent Jack back.”

This source said that Valenti, who continues to insist publicly that there is no need for a new rating, discussed several alternatives to the current system, and that he and the studio chiefs had pretty much settled on a new category--possibly designated RR--that would have been sandwiched between the current R (no one younger than 17 admitted without a parent or guardian) and X (no one younger than 17 admitted).

The new rating would have had language more accurately indicating the strength of the film’s content and would have been used for non-pornographic, adult-themed films, such as “Henry & June” and Pedro Almodovar’s “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” At the same time, it would have retained the X as an open-ended, non-copyrighted category that anyone could self-apply to a film without submitting it to the MPAA.

Valenti was in Italy on Friday attending the Venice Film Festival, where “Henry & June” was having its world premiere, and was unavailable for comment. But MPAA sources say that, in recent weeks, he had privately begun lobbying them for relief from his critics and from what he feared was the beginning of a wave of lawsuits. He suggested either changing the designation of the current X or creating a new adults-only category.

Apparently the majority of the studio heads were in favor of a new rating from the beginning, but there were two holdouts. Why would a studio chief resist a rating that would expand the market? Because of the fear that it would make high-powered filmmakers who tread the outer-edge of R more difficult to rein in, and because of the enforcement problems it would cause for the theater chains, which in some cases they own.

Enter the new opposition: the exhibitors.

Sources in the exhibition business say the problem of checking IDs for adults-only screenings would cause gridlock at the door, and that it would shift the responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the system away from the rating board and parental discretion directly to them .

Well, cry us a river!

Theater owners--concessionaires with only the vaguest connection to their principal product--have been both the primary beneficiaries of the rating system and the key abusers of it. If they had been enforcing the R rating by making sure that unaccompanied kids don’t get into films with that designation, a new rating--and all of the controversies of recent months--might not have been necessary. There can little doubt that the new conservatism of the ratings board reflects the public’s unease with the content of films being released as R’s.

All of the major controversies over the ratings system trace back to the MPAA’s original decision not to copyright the X, on the advice of lawyers who felt that a closed system would invite restraint of trade suits. But the porn industry quickly adopted it as an easy beacon for the raincoat crowd, and when major media outlets began refusing ads for X-rated films, the adults-only category was off-limits to legitimate filmmakers.

Since then, scores of movies have had to be trimmed by their unhappy directors to conform to the broader R rating. Occasionally, a distributor has gone to the expense of appealing the X, gambling that if it lost, the controversy would at least spur the box office. And very infrequently, the appeals have succeeded.

There have been many controversies over ratings in the past 10 years, but 1990 has become the Year of the X. Well-publicized protests from the distributors of the X-rated “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,” “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!,” “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover,” “Life Is Cheap . . . but toilet paper is expensive” and others have led to two lawsuits, a scathing indictment of the ratings system by a New York judge, and calls for a new adults-only rating by critics groups and by a blue-chip roster of directors that includes Sydney Pollack, Barry Levinson and Francis Coppola.

Through it all, Valenti has publicly maintained his faith in a system that he designed as a way for distributors and exhibitors, in alliance, to neutralize community censorship groups and to discourage legislation. What Valenti created back then was a streamlined machine, the Ferrari of diplomacy. But in refusing to change the flat tire given it by the pornographers, he has allowed it to become an unreliable rust bucket.

People usually treat their Ferraris better than that.

Oct. 3 may provide a milestone in the rating saga. If the X rating of “Henry & June” is overturned by the appeals board, it will be the biggest scandal of all. While tastefully done, the story of author Anais Nin’s torrid affairs with Henry Miller and his wife in 1931 Paris is unarguably more graphic than Miramax Films’ “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!,” which lost its appeal, and independent distributors will have the proof they need that a double-standard exists.

“I will cry foul from the rooftops if it’s overturned,” said Miramax’s Russell Schwartz. “They will really be digging themselves into a hole with us.”

If “Henry & June’s” X is sustained at the hearing, Universal will face the choice of either releasing the first major studio X in more than a decade, or trimming its content for an R. Either way, they figure to lose big at the box office.

For now, negotiations between Valenti and the exhibitors lines up pretty much like the U.S. position in the Persian Gulf. With the major studios behind him, he can put a new tire on that Ferrari, call it a tank and drive it right down the exhibitors’ throats if he wants to. But Valenti isn’t that kind of politician.

“Jack will get the new rating by persuasion,” said one studio executive. “Whether he’ll get it in time to help ‘Henry & June’ is the question.”