For Teen Comedies, PG-13 Is In

Early in Norm Macdonald’s new film, “Dirty Work,” the comedian is thrown in jail after a scheme he hatched to earn $50,000 goes awry. No sooner does the comic voice a fear of what happens to soft guys in prison than he is taken away by three hulking tattooed bikers.

“Hey,” he says, berating the bikers with the mock severity that was his trademark as the Weekend Update anchor on “Saturday Night Live.” “You fellows have a lot of growing up to do.”

It’s a big laugh line, especially if you’re a teenager raised on the raunchy flippancy of “SNL”-bred comics like Macdonald, Adam Sandler and David Spade. But big laugh or not, it won’t be in the movie when the MGM film arrives June 12 in theaters around the country. Making fun of sodomy didn’t play well with the Motion Picture Assn. of America, whose ratings board is responsible for assigning film ratings that suggest to parents what films are appropriate for their children.

“That was nonnegotiable--if we’d kept it, we would’ve had a R rating,” says “Dirty Work” producer Robert Simonds, who has made a series of low-budget, lowbrow youth comedies, including “Happy Gilmore” and “The Wedding Singer.” “You just can’t have the star of your movie reprimanding his tormentors for being [violated] and still get a PG-13.”

It hardly matters that “Dirty Work” may get a D grade from critics when it hits the theaters. In today’s Hollywood, the important grade for youth comedy is PG-13, a rating introduced in 1984 that provided a middle ground between the nearly-anything-goes R rating and the more restrictive PG rating, which severely limits a film’s language and sexual content.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, many comedy hits were R-rated, including such pivotal films as “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” “Porky’s,” “Blazing Saddles” and “Police Academy.” But since 1984, R-rated youth comedies have become an endangered species. In fact, since the release of the R-rated “Eddie Murphy: Raw” in December 1987, 27 youth comedies have earned more than $45 million in domestic box-office business. All 27 were rated either PG or PG-13. (These numbers do not include adult-oriented comedies like “Get Shorty” or action-comedies like “Money Talks.”)

“Movie studios are really following the PG-13 mandate,” says Gerry Rich, president of worldwide marketing at MGM Pictures. “For parents of young teens, it really provides a good housekeeping seal of approval. Our production and marketing budgets are so much higher these days that a PG-13 rating is a logical choice--it gives you a broader range of distribution and more freedom with TV advertising.”

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Unfortunately, logic doesn’t always factor into the MPAA ratings game. For years, filmmakers have complained about the capriciousness of the ratings board, most recently director James Toback, who dismissed the MPAA as “intellectually shabby and block-headed” after battling to get an R rating for his recent film “Two Guys and a Girl.”

“There’s no consistency,” says Simonds. “When you submit the movie, it goes into this weird soup pot where decisions aren’t simply reactions to the use of language, but to the cumulative use of language. So everything becomes very subjective.”

Although stung by frequent filmmaker complaints, the MPAA has refused to open its ratings process to public scrutiny. Calls to Richard Mosk, co-chairman of the MPAA’s classification and ratings administration board, were referred to a spokesperson, who said the MPAA doesn’t comment on ratings decisions involving specific films.

However, Simonds provided a rare inside peek into the ratings process by allowing The Times to view both an R and PG-13 version of “Dirty Work,” which stars Macdonald and comic Artie Lange as two childhood friends who, in need of quick money to help Lange’s father get a heart transplant, start a revenge-for-hire business. It also co-stars Chevy Chase as a heart specialist with a gambling problem and Jack Warden as Lange’s father, with cameo appearances by Chris Farley, Don Rickles, John Goodman and Gary Coleman.

The film received an R the first time the film was submitted to the ratings board. After the filmmakers removed any potentially objectionable language and situations, they resubmitted the film and received a PG-13. The filmmakers then reinserted some of their favorite jokes, submitted the film a third time, and retained a PG-13 rating.

“After a while you get a sense of what’s flipping them out,” says Simonds. “Once you know the 15 things that seem to bother them, then you can try cutting 10 things, and keeping five you really like, and then resubmit the movie and see how they react.”

Some objectionable language automatically triggers an R rating. Other words are allowable in carefully limited doses. A PG-13 film can include one use of the F-word, for example, but only when used as profanity, not in a sexual context.

One scene in the R-rated version of “Dirty Work” shows Warden watching two naked women in a porn film. When Macdonald enters the room, Warden shoos him away with a crude remark about the women.

In the PG-13 version of the film, the porn film has been replaced by a workout video with two women in spandex tights. Warden’s line has been altered to: “I’m trying to watch these broads work out.” The PG-13 version is also missing a scene in which Warden boasts about working in stag films as well as a scene in which Macdonald, to earn quick money, takes a job providing gay phone sex.

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Not all the changes were so obvious. The PG-13 version still contains numerous examples of objectionable language that can’t be printed in a family newspaper. “It’s cumulative,” says Simonds. “We’d often cut one [expletive] and keep another, depending on which got the bigger laugh in our test screenings.”

Simonds says the process was especially difficult for Macdonald, who was ousted from his Weekend Update anchor post at “Saturday Night Live” in January after performing material considered objectionable by NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer. “Norm was a little sensitive because of what happened with ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ” acknowledges Simonds. “So we sat down and made a list of the jokes he liked, that pushed the envelope, and we got almost all of them through. If anything, pruning some of the jokes made the movie play better by letting us be more selective with the use of shock humor.”

Earlier this year, “Half Baked,” a Simonds-produced comedy, was given an R rating, largely because of the film’s multiple references to pot smoking. The film’s pre-release tracking numbers had predicted an $11.5-million opening weekend. Instead, the film barely did $7 million, and ended up making only $17 million in its theatrical run.

“If it had been a PG-13, it would’ve done incredibly better,” says Simonds. “If you’re making a movie for a 12- to 18-year-old audience, and you get an R rating, you lose too much of your target audience. If it’s an R movie, you can’t get kids to come to matinee showings, because their parents won’t take them. If the movie’s PG-13, they can come in the afternoon by themselves.”

A PG-13 movie also has a huge advantage with TV advertising, the primary means of raising awareness with young moviegoers. Most networks won’t air ads for an R-rated film before 9 p.m. “If you get an R, you can’t advertise on shows like ‘The Simpsons’ or ‘King of the Hill,’ ” says MGM’s Rich. “‘So having a PG rating is a big marketing plus.”

But has the economic incentive to earn a PG-13 rating been responsible for a fall-off in quality in present-day youth comedy? It’s hard to find comedies today that are as universally beloved as films like “Animal House,” “Stripes” and “Caddyshack,” which all were R-rated films.

“PG-13 has killed comedy in modern-day movies,” says writer-director Roger Kumble, who is currently shooting “Cruel Inventions,” a high-school sex comedy with Sarah Michele Geller and Reese Witherspoon. “Once PG-13 got established, you couldn’t be outrageous and politically incorrect--you can’t take as many risks. So you just can’t capture the real teen vernacular. Think about the legendary [caught-in-the-act] scene between Phoebe Cates and Judge Reinhold in ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High.’ You could never do that today and get a PG-13.”

The ratings debate will be tested again later this summer. 20th Century Fox is releasing “There’s Something About Mary,” an R-rated sex comedy with Cameron Diaz, Ben Stiller and Matt Dillon that tested so well in early screenings that the studio moved up its release from fall to July 15. Fox executives say the movie, produced by the same filmmakers who made “Dumb and Dumber,” was always intended as an R film.

“BASEketball,” a comedy due July 31 from Universal Pictures, is also expected to receive an R rating. The film’s writers and co-stars, “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have insisted that their “South Park” film, due next year from Paramount Pictures, be released as an R movie as well. If one of these movies is a hit, will it change the conventional wisdom about PG-13 comedy?

“Absolutely,” says Rich. “For now, the ratings issue has encouraged a level of self-censorship, because we all need to find a broad audience for our films. But in Hollywood, one big hit can start a new cycle.”