It’s the Summer of the Ascendant ‘R’

At some point this year, Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” is likely to become the first R-rated film since “Terminator 2” in 1991 to gross more than $200 million.

Last weekend, “Ryan” along with the vampire adventure “Blade,” the wildly successful gross-out comedy “There’s Something About Mary” and the karate flick “Knock Off” were the four top-grossing films in the country--and all carried the restrictive “R” rating.

The success of films like “Ryan” and “Mary” ($130 million in box office so far) goes against the conventional industry wisdom that R-rated movies can spell trouble at the box office. Of the highest-grossing movies of all time, only a handful are R-rated, especially in the past decade as PG and PG-13 films dominated the mainstream market.

So does this send a signal to Hollywood that the R rating won’t hurt the chances of mainstream films? Probably not, say industry executives who believe that by and large the R rating still has a negative impact on attendance. And the reasons for that are often contradictory and self-fulfilling.

Over the past several years, especially during the summer, the motion picture industry has practiced a kind of de facto self-censorship to maximize ticket sales for mainstream movies--though no studio executive would ever admit that on the record.

Studio executives at Sony and Disney have reported in the past that the graphic violence quotient on such action films as “Godzilla” and “Armageddon” was consciously minimized. From the script stage on, both movies were “designed” to avoid the R rating based on the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s general guidelines.

The reason is simple: “A PG or PG-13 film will generally do more business than an R-rated movie,” says Tom Sherak, senior executive at 20th Century Fox, articulating a generally held industry philosophy.

The R rating hurt Fox’s “Mary” initially because small-town theater owners resisted booking the sexually frank comedy. Small towns are the last bastions of single-auditorium, privately owned movie houses. Such communities are generally more conservative in all respects, but especially when it comes to movies with sexual content as opposed to graphic violence.

Since these theaters are sometimes the only venue in town, given the choice, they’re more likely to book a popular general-audience film like “The Parent Trap” or a PG-13 adventure like “The Mask of Zorro” than a more risque slice of entertainment like “Mary.”

However, when Mary moved to “event” status (the film built its audience over the summer and is expected to top $150 million), many of these theater owners finally capitulated.

Meanwhile, DreamWorks’ distribution executive Jim Tharp says he had no trouble booking “Ryan” into many of those same small towns, but he admits that film is the exception rather than the rule. Despite scenes of violence more graphic than any film in recent memory, the serious and patriotic nature of Ryan’s story plus the overwhelmingly positive reviews and word of mouth gave the film just the right stamp of approval, according to Tharp. And that helped clear the way for a movie that would otherwise not have been able to expand to close to 2,800 screens.

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“If the average moviegoer sees five films a year, in small towns it’s probably two or three,” says Tharp. Similar to “Titanic” earlier this year, “Ryan” became a must-see film for even the most infrequent moviegoer.

The influence of the R rating goes beyond small towns. It also has an effect on repeat business patterns, especially during summer when the primary midweek audience is under 17 years of age. That’s how “Armageddon” and, more dramatically, “Independence Day” and “Men in Black” culled such impressive grosses. The young male action fan base (ages 13 to 21) rushes out to see films and is more likely to return for repeat viewings. When New Line Cinema was planning such films as “Mortal Kombat” and “Spawn,” they were conscious of the under-17 (largely male) crowd as a large part of the films’ potential base, says company senior executive Michael De Luca.

New Line wanted the young male action crowd that regularly goes to see R-rated films like the “Lethal Weapon” series. But they also wanted younger teens. Both films were targeted as PG-13 candidates.

But with “Blade” says De Luca, “it was important to be true to the vampire content of the film.” Since it’s essentially a horror film, the absence of a certain level of violence would have been as inconceivable as “Something About Mary” without hair gel.

“We didn’t want to cop out on [the violence],” says De Luca. “ ‘Blade’ was viewed as an R-rated film and shot accordingly.”

Again, because it’s an action film, “Blade” met with less resistance from exhibitors because of the R rating than sexually themed films like “The People vs. Larry Flynt” or New Line’s “Boogie Nights,” and not just in small towns.

“There’s definitely more of a double standard when it comes to sex,” says De Luca. And that applies not only to exhibitor reluctance but even with audiences at test screenings, he adds, where the discomfort level is always higher for frank depictions of sex than for violence.

It’s not so much that an R rating can drag down a film as it is that a PG or PG-13 rating can dramatically enhance a film’s potential, executives say. Most R-rated films do better business in major metropolitan areas than in small towns anyway. And even when they’re booked into less populous areas, say both Tharp and Sherak, they don’t generally perform as well. Parents are less likely to take their kids to an R-rated film or even go themselves, they say.

Single theaters in smaller communities are also able to better police the ratings, says De Luca. Despite their best attempts, multiplexes can’t always be as stringent about admissions--not to mention kids who buy a ticket to a film like “The Parent Trap” and then sneak into “Blade” or “Mary.”

“Unless you’re policing every door at a 12-plex or a 16-plex, it’s hard to keep kids out, “ admits Tharp. Since those receipts can never be accurately counted, R-rated films are viewed as having a ceiling.

So the R rating is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy. As long as U.S. box-office performance continues to be the engine in driving worldwide ticket sales, R-rated subject matter will continue to make up only a small part of any studio’s annual release schedule.