R-Rated Movie Policy: Teens Policing Teens

Jesse Mun~oz is on the front lines in America’s war to prevent impressionable youngsters from watching R-rated movies.

A teen himself, Mun~oz makes about $6 an hour supervising other young ushers who earn $5.75 an hour at a theater complex in Valencia. He believes vigilance is the key to preventing kids under 17 from sneaking into R-rated movies--and the 18-year-old Saugus resident has seen every trick in the book.

“Some of them are pretty good,” says Mun~oz, 18, an usher since the age of 16. “They go upstairs, hang around the video games for a while, then go to the bathroom and hang out and wait until it gets busy and then go in.”

But sometimes kids who sneak into R-rated movies will give themselves away.

“They’ll be throwing popcorn or spitting spit wads and someone will complain,” Mun~oz said.

In the wake of the April 20 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in which two students killed 13 people before taking their own lives, Congress and the White House have sought ways to limit the access of children and teens to violent entertainment.

Last week, President Clinton and the National Assn. of Theater Owners, which represents about 65% of the nation’s theater chains, announced that youngsters now would be required to show a photo identification to prove that they are 17 before entering an R-rated film without a parent or guardian.

But for the new enhanced enforcement to succeed, it will rely heavily on teenage ushers making minimum wage and often facing incredible peer pressure to police other teenagers.

“I think the most difficult thing--and sometimes we lose sight of this--is that we have 16- and 17-year-olds dealing with 16- and 17-year-olds,” said William Kartozian, who heads the theater owners association.

“I am confident we can stop them at the box office,” Kartozian added. “But once they’re inside the theater, if a kid decides to make a game of it, they will win their share of the encounters.”

Kartozian readily concedes that teenage ushers will face enormous peer pressure when carrying out the photo ID checks. After all, he noted, the kids will have to face their friends the next day at school.

“It will be a real test of their character,” he said.

Kartozian noted that the response from his membership has been largely positive, although some theater owners are asking one major question: Where are the parents in all of this?

“There are some [theater owners] who feel we’re asking them to be taking the place of the parents,” Kartozian said. “The fact of the matter is, the rating system is there primarily for parents to let them know what their kids should see. . . . There is a shared responsibility.”

The Cool Factor and the Ways Around the Rule

To many youths under 17, the news that theaters will soon be cracking down is something of a joke. For years, they say, they have had no trouble getting in to see virtually any R-rated movie they want.

Besides, they add, most of the Hollywood films they want to see these days are rated R, from “Scream” and “Varsity Blues” to “The Matrix.” No 15- or 16-year-old wants to see a G-rated movie, they say. It just isn’t cool.

Teenagers say that even if movie theaters do check photo IDs, there are myriad ways to get around the policy.

“A lot of teenagers work in the movie theaters, and they also give us [complimentary] tickets,” said Laura Weathersbee, 17, of Huntington Beach, who was going to see “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” (rated PG-13) with her boyfriend.

With purple jewels stuck in her hair and a plastic purse embossed with a monkey face, Weathersbee looks young. Still, she said, she’s only been carded once in her life. She also has bought tickets over the phone with a credit card before as a way to avoid any hassle at the box office.

“Unless it’s a really busy movie, we don’t really even check ticket stubs,” said Megan Jolly, 17, who sells popcorn at the Edwards Triangle Square in Newport Beach. “Kids just go right on in.”

At today’s megaplexes, which contain 14, 20 or sometimes even 30 screens under one roof, ushers face a daunting task to keep track of the comings and goings of hundreds of teens who drift from the video arcades to concession stands to the auditoriums where the movies play.

Theater managers admit some laxity in carding kids for movies in the past: The box office can be swarming with people buying tickets and an underage person can easily be overlooked. Also, when lobbies are teeming with people, ushers don’t always spot who goes into what theater.

Even when theaters do check IDs, they find it isn’t foolproof.

“We require school identification,” said James Lomeli, assistant manager of the box office at Edwards Triangle Square, but he added that many times the identification doesn’t include age.

“We’re using our own judgment,” he said. “You get the feel for guessing people’s age.”

Fresh-faced and clean-cut, Sabrina Jefferson and Lindsay Thomas, both 14-year-old ninth-graders at Artesia High School, say they’ve had no trouble getting into R-rated movies since they were in the seventh grade.

“Kids go anywhere they want,” Sabrina said.

Standing outside a Starbucks at Cerritos Towne Center, the girls, who look their age, listed some of the R-rated films they had seen in the past.

Lindsay, for instance, said she had no trouble buying tickets to see such movies as “Boogie Nights,” an explicit--if comic--depiction of the Southern California porn industry in the 1970s. Nor was she banned from purchasing tickets to “Belly,” an urban thriller that chronicles the lives of two childhood friends as they climb the rungs of organized crime.

And it isn’t only in Cerritos where they get into these movies, they noted. They have purchased tickets to R-rated films all over Long Beach, Lakewood and Downey.

How did they get in? Simple. “We buy a ticket for a PG movie and then go to an R-rated movie,” Lindsay explained. If that doesn’t work, they ask an older friend to buy the tickets for them.

Both girls scoff at adults who worry that youngsters their age shouldn’t be allowed to see violent movies like “The Matrix” without a parent’s permission.

“That don’t mean we’d do it because we see it,” Sabrina explained. “It’s just a picture.”

Under the plan instituted by the theater owners association, each chain will be responsible for coming up with their own logistics on how to police the ratings system.

Some theaters say that, although they have been vigilant for years, they now plan to increase their efforts to police the ratings system.

Kevin Frabotta, vice president of operations at Newport Beach-based Edwards Theatres Circuit Inc., which operates 700 screens in California and Idaho, said his chain plans to do a “refresher” course for ushers and box office personnel but emphasized that his company has been policing the ratings system for years.

“We have taken a stand on the R rating,” Frabotta said. “I don’t want to say we’re not taking a hard look at it from what is going on, but we are re-enforcing our policies and practices.”

The voluntary ratings system was developed by the Motion Picture Assn. of America in 1968, but over the years it has been largely flouted by teens under 17 and often ignored by theaters.

Although theaters have undoubtedly been lax in enforcing the voluntary regulations, many do routinely check IDs.

On one recent afternoon, for example, the AMC Burbank 14 was showing such R-rated films as the science fiction thrillers “Black Mask” and “The Thirteenth Floor,” along with several PG and PG-13 features.

After purchasing a ticket at the box office, moviegoers stepped inside where they had to pass one ticket collector at the front of the lobby. Once through this checkpoint, however, it was possible to wander into any of the individual theaters within the complex without encountering an usher at the front of each entrance.

Jason Mead, 15, of Burbank, recently found himself stopped before he could get inside the AMC Burbank 14 movie theater complex. Mead wanted to catch a late afternoon showing of the psychological thriller “Instinct,” but he was prevented from buying a ticket when he couldn’t show proof that he was at least 17.

“Sometimes people in the box office are cool about it,” he said. “They don’t even ask questions.” Other times, he added, he simply buys a ticket to a PG-rated movie and then once inside the theater complex walks into the R-rated feature he really wants to see.

“I saw ‘Blade’ and that was rated R,” he recalled. When asked how his parents feel about him seeing R-rated films, Mead replies, “They don’t care. It’s no big deal. It’s just a movie.”

Butterfly barrettes in her hair, Shirlene Afshar, 13, was going to see the new “Star Wars” movie with her mother in Newport Beach. “You can’t watch your child 24 hours a day,” said her mother, Marlene. “You have to teach kids discipline so they can judge for themselves.”

But as with adults, young people also have differing views about whether there is too much violence in today’s movies.

“In some movies, there’s lots of profanity and nudity and violence,” said 14-year-old Alex Huitink of Burbank. “And it’s not good for kids these days because they might go out on the street and try and do whatever they see in the movies.”

But at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Diana Smith, who attends the Marlborough School in Hancock Park, said the age limit to get into R-rated films is too high.

“I think 17 is, like, a little old for rated-R movies,” she said. “That’s like saying teenagers haven’t been exposed to any of this stuff, which is not true, obviously. I think a more appropriate age would be like 15 or 14 because obviously in everyday life you get exposed to all this stuff.”

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Freelance writer Saul Rubin contributed to this story.