Do Movie Ratings Need New Categories?

“Smoke and mirrors” is how filmmaker Matt Stone recently described the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s movie rating system.

“Hypocritical . . . and broken-down,” wrote film critic Roger Ebert.

“Political artifice,” opined Peter Bart, the editor of Variety.

“A de facto censorship board,” agreed the Broadcast Film Critics Assn.

In the face of all this, MPAA President Jack Valenti remained unfazed (though a tad testy), calling critics of the ratings system he authored 31 years ago “so-called intellectuals” and giving them this nickname: CWs, or Constant Whiners.

Even for Hollywood, this exchange of verbal invective--conducted in public, in several guest columns in Variety as well as a televised debate (between Valenti and Bart) on NBC’s “Today” show--has been unusually personal. Stone has called Valenti “nauseating” and a liar, for example, and Ebert said Valenti lacks “the slightest understanding of film as an art form.”

Wipe away the barbed rhetoric, however, and the argument remains a sticky one. At issue: How to give parents guidance about film content while preserving filmmakers’ artistic freedom. Critics of the current MPAA rating system--which uses the symbols G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17--say it fails on both counts, neither fully informing consumers nor protecting cinematic creativity.

“Noisy kvetching,” says Valenti derisively of this new wave of criticism, which has escalated in the wake of the high school shootings in Littleton, Colo., and the subsequent debate about young people’s access to violent media. But lately the kvetching has gotten louder and harder to dismiss, including several high-profile ratings battles--over Stone and Trey Parker’s “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” the late Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” and Spike Lee’s “Summer of Sam,” to name three--and a variety of proposals to revamp the ratings system.

Is the MPAA system, which last year gave 65% of all movies an R rating, due for a change? Those who say yes are proposing everything from banning young children from attending R-rated films to inventing a new “adult” rating between R and NC-17.

Critic Roger Ebert Urges New Adults-Only Rating

The latter is Ebert’s idea. He argues that the current system effectively rules out the possibility of what he calls “a true adults-only movie.” He calls for a new “A” rating between R and NC-17, that would signify adult material that is not pornographic.

“A kid can always find an adult to get him in [to an R-rated film],” Ebert said. “The A rating would say, ‘No, you’re under 17 so you can’t come in at all.’ ”

(If Ebert were to get his way, it wouldn’t be the first time the MPAA ratings system was tinkered with. Initially, for example, the rating now known as PG was called M, for mature audiences. Parents found it confusing, thinking that was a sterner rating than the R. It was changed first to GP and then, a year later, to PG. The PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984 and in 1990, the X rating was replaced by the NC-17.)

Bart, of Variety, has his own idea. He believes that the explosion of publicity, advertising and Internet chatter that surround each new film has lessened the need for such a stratified rating system. He suggests paring the system down to just two categories: one for children, the other for adults.

And Stone, who recently negotiated with the MPAA ratings board (a group of Los Angeles-area parents whose identities are kept secret) to edit his and Parker’s “South Park” movie down to an R rating, urges that the NC-17 be dropped altogether.

“Include symbols for nudity, violence, language, drug use, etc. . . . next to the rating, [and] add qualifiers such as M for mild and E for extreme,” Stone suggested recently in a column in Variety. “With the added labeling, parents can make educated decisions about content. And no filmmaker would have to cut anything, ever.”

A Rating of NC-17 Is the Kiss of Death

To cut or not to cut--at its core, this is what the ratings debate boils down to. That, and economics. For because an NC-17 rating is the kiss of death at the box office (movies with that rating are prohibited from advertising in many media outlets, screening in many theaters or renting in some video stores), movie studios usually contractually require directors to work with the MPAA to whittle films down to at least an R rating.

Last month, after Warner Bros. acknowledged that the late Stanley Kubrick had digitally altered his last film, “Eyes Wide Shut,” in order to get an R rating (and the broader audience that comes with it), critics went ballistic. Ebert scolded Warner Bros. for not taking the opportunity to try to legitimize the NC-17 rating, arguing that the triple-threat of Kubrick and his two stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, might have removed some of the taint that stains the NC-17 label.

The Los Angeles Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle, meanwhile, strongly condemned the MPAA rating system, calling it “a force of censorship” that was having a “chilling effect” on creative freedom. And the Broadcast Film Critics Assn., which endorsed Ebert’s “A” rating idea, urged the addition of one more person to the MPAA’s 12-member rating board: a film historian.

Valenti insists that because filmmakers ultimately choose to edit their films to meet the MPAA rating board’s standards, the system cannot be accused of censoring anyone. If, during the editing process, filmmakers consider how their movies’ rating will affect its box-office grosses, he says, they do so voluntarily and should stop their griping.

But Bart, among others, sees this as disingenuous. Economics and artistry have always gone hand in hand in Hollywood, he points out, and he worries that the rating process diverts filmmakers’ attention from the goal of making quality films, leaving them to dwell instead on how to trick the MPAA into an R or a PG-13.

System Doesn’t Shield Children, Critics Claim

Ebert goes one step further, alleging that instead of helping parents shield their children from objectionable material, the ratings system inevitably allows in more violence and sex under the R rating than many 17-year-olds should see.

“In the name of providing guidance for parents, Valenti has presided over an explosion of smutty material that should be [rated] A but is being retailed as R,” Ebert wrote in his own Variety guest column. “This is the Summer of Raunch, and Valenti and his hypocritical rating system are its authors.”

It’s easy to find examples, both recent and of what many see as a bloated R rating. To wit: John Sayles’ recent “Limbo,” a gentle (but occasionally profane) story about an Alaskan fishing village, shares an R rating with Joel Schumacher’s hyper-violent “8mm,” about the world of snuff films.

That perception has led some in the movie industry to quietly discuss changing the definition of the R rating. One idea is to take the current definition, “Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian,” and add this: “And no one under 10 admitted.”

“Everybody is so obsessed with teenagers [sneaking into R-rated films] they’re forgetting about younger children. What R-rated movie could possibly be appropriate for a 6-year-old with or without his parents?” asked writer-director Gary Ross, who is among those who supports the idea.

Valenti said he has considered--and rejected--such a change because it would abridge parents’ rights.

“If a parent wants to bring a 10-year-old in, is a theater owner going to say no? [A parent would say,] ‘Hold on a minute! That’s my kid!’ ” he said. “The reason you can’t drive when you’re 12 is you might kill somebody. If you go into a movie, how do you hurt somebody else?”

As for Ebert’s A rating idea, Valenti says such a change would make the MPAA vulnerable to lawsuits from movie producers who feel their films deserve the “good adult” not the “bad adult” rating. On the “Today” show last week, he jokingly suggested that he would consider the idea, but only if Bart and the publishers of Variety would agree to pay all damages won in the resulting lawsuits.