DGA Seeks to Replace NC-17 Rating

Prompted by the recent Federal Trade Commission report regarding violence in the media and ways it is marketed to American youth, the Directors Guild of America on Thursday called for changes in the current movie ratings system. A DGA task force urged that an alternative to the current NC-17 rating, which bans all minors from certain films, be developed.

“The NC-17 rating that currently exists has been an abject failure,” said the guild’s Task Force on Violence and Social Responsibility, which prepared Thursday’s statement. “[Because of the current stigma attached to the restrictive rating] many films that should not be seen by minors are re-cut so that they receive a [regular] R rating. This has the effect of not only compromising filmmakers’ visions, but also greatly increasing the likelihood that adult-oriented movies are seen by the very groups for which they are not intended.”

In addition, the guild’s statement called for a new system that would differentiate between younger and older children (the current Motion Picture Assn. of America ratings system denotes films as either suitable or unsuitable for those under 17), since “some films may be appropriate for older children to see with parental accompaniment [while] some are inappropriate for younger children under any circumstances.”

Director Paris Barclay, a DGA vice president, says the guild’s recommendations are not meant as a criticism of the current MPAA ratings system. “We think it’s the best thing going in any industry,” says Barclay, director of numerous “NYPD Blue” episodes as well as the film “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central . . . .” “But we think it can be clarified and strengthened. There’s a way to make ratings more clear and consistent,” he adds.

The guild task force--made up of 25 prominent directors including Barclay, Michael Bay, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, David Fincher, Albert and Allen Hughes, Mimi Leder, Michael Mann, Sydney Pollack, Rob Reiner, Betty Thomas and Lili Zanuck--said such changes would help parents, who it said should shoulder the “ultimate obligation” to “protect their children from exposure to material they deem inappropriate.”

“No filmmaker wants his or her film to be seen by those for whom it was not intended,” said the guild’s statement, which nonetheless called the idea of government enforcement of any ratings system--as opposed to voluntary industry measures--”both inappropriate and unconstitutional.”

The task force advocates a new rating that would allow filmmakers to tell “adult stories without the fear that minors would see them,” while at the same time ensuring that films would not be stigmatized by an NC-17 rating. “We need a rating for films with adult content that aren’t exploitative,” says Barclay.

“A good example would be a film like ‘Midnight Cowboy,’ which won an Oscar in 1970 but received an X rating. It’s a movie that should be rated for mature adults, but not to the point where it would be so stigmatized that theater owners wouldn’t play it at all.”