Arguing their case against NC-17

Wayne Kramer looked a little beleaguered as he ordered a plate of eggs for breakfast the other day. The 38-year-old director of “The Cooler” has a crushing weight on his shoulders: He’s trying to figure out what he can say to a Motion Picture Assn. of America appeals board that will prevent it from tattooing his film with the deadly NC-17 rating.

With a cast that includes William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin and Maria Bello -- who’s also at breakfast -- “The Cooler,” a love story that unfolds in an aging Vegas casino, has been getting critical plaudits since its debut at the Sundance Film Festival. It’s due for release nationwide in November from Lions Gate Films. But first it must survive the movie industry’s version of a trial by fire. When Kramer submitted the film to the MPAA ratings board, it received an NC-17 (no one under 17 admitted), a rating that has become such a kiss of death that, since “Showgirls” in 1995, no studio has released an NC-17 film.

The rating board’s inscrutable, often infuriating judgment calls about sexual content are legend. Last year, it gave an R rating to “Solaris” for showing George Clooney’s bare bottom, a decision eventually overturned by the appeals board. After Roger Avary’s “The Rules of Attraction” got an NC-17 last year, causing him to cut many of the film’s sex scenes, the director fumed: “I would prefer outright censorship. It would be more fair than what I’m going through now.”

Kramer, who grew up in South Africa during apartheid, is no stranger to censorship. As a teenage movie buff, he had illegal copies of “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Exorcist,” and “Body Double,” all of which were banned by government censors. “A movie couldn’t have sex, violence, bad language, politics or any kind of interracial romance,” he says at breakfast, rehearsing a speech he would later deliver to the 15-person appeals board, made up of representatives from theater chains and the major studios. (A two-thirds majority is needed to overturn.)

“Someone told the police I had the movies and they raided my house -- like it was a drug raid -- and arrested me.” The charges were later dropped, Kramer says, only because he’d befriended one of the vice cops. “He became my supplier and helped me get other films. It turned out he really loved movies!”

“The Cooler” received an NC-17 for one brief scene, a bedroom encounter between Macy and Bello that shows a glimpse of Bello’s pubic hair and implies that Macy has been engaged in oral sex. It’s a bitter pill for Kramer, who can think of dozens of movie scenes that are more objectionable. “American film is being horribly infantalized. If you want to see something adult, you have to stay home and watch HBO,” he says. “It’s OK to show semen in a Farrelly Brothers comedy, but when a movie tries to depict sexuality in a non-glamorous way, you’re in trouble.”

No one, not even maverick Lions Gate, will release an NC-17 film -- and with good reason. Key theater chains might not book it; many TV and newspaper outlets would refuse to advertise it; and once it went to video, where the real profits are for most films, major chains such as Blockbuster wouldn’t stock it. To assure any kind of wide release for his film, Kramer’s only hope is to appeal the rating, which is why he, Bello and Lions Gate chief Tom Ortenberg are plotting strategy at a Sunset Strip eatery. As with almost everything involving the ratings board, the process is shrouded in secrecy. So when Lions Gate agreed to let me watch the filmmakers have their day in court, I jumped at the chance, accompanying the trio to the Sunset Screening Room down the block, where the appeals board watched the film.

After the appeals board sees a film, two of its supporters -- in this case Kramer and Bello -- are allowed to lobby in the hopes of overturning the original decision. When Revolution Studios’ “Anger Management” got an R rating, director Peter Segal gave a passionate and obviously persuasive defense of his film, and the appeals board overturned the decision, giving the film a PG-13. When Disney’s “The Hot Chick” got an R, star Rob Schneider wooed the appeals board, which overturned the ruling. Likewise with Miramax’s “Diamonds,” which had its R rating reduced to PG-13 in 1999 after the film’s star, Kirk Douglas, made a personal appearance before the board.

Like other independents who are not members of the studio-bankrolled MPAA, Lions Gate hasn’t fared as well. At breakfast, when Bello quizzes Ortenberg about what to say that would sway the board, Ortenberg laughed: “Don’t ask me. We always lose.” He cautions Bello and Kramer to avoid making comparisons with other movies, saying that it will only hurt their case.

“So what point should we emphasize?” Bello asks.

“To me,” says Ortenberg, “we should stress that this is a love story between two real people.” Kramer jumps in: “And you should say that, as a mother, you’d be happy to have your son, when he’s 13 or 14, see this movie. You could say, ‘I’m proud of the work I’ve done. People are going to walk out of this movie with a smile on their face, having seen a real love story.’ ”

Bello thinks it would be important for her to explain why she is seen naked in the film. “I get lots of scripts where you’re just showing your [breasts] for the sake of showing your [breasts], which I just throw away. But this script felt real to me emotionally.”

“The more intimacy you have on screen, the more you believe the story,” Kramer says. “When I see someone having sex with their bra on, the first thing I think is, ‘It’s a movie.’ ” Ortenberg is in full agreement. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had sex with anyone with a bra on. No matter what’s going on, there always seems to be time to take the bra off.”

As it has done with many other films, the ratings board penalized “The Cooler” for a moment of frank sexuality but ignored the film’s scenes of brutal violence, including a sequence in which Baldwin, playing an old-school casino operator, takes a tire iron to a guy he catches cheating at the craps table.

As Kramer puts it: “People get shot in the head and bashed to a bloody pulp in movies all the time, but we get an NC-17 for a glimpse of pubic hair. Why is that, do you think?”

Why, indeed. The question of why the MPAA would take offense at a tender love scene while serenely approving a sequence involving a brutal beating is one of the enduring mysteries of Hollywood. The identities of the parents who rate movies for the MPAA-affiliated Classification and Ratings Administration are so closely guarded that I doubt even U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft could figure out who they are. The MPAA also refuses to defend its rulings, saying it won’t discuss the reasons for a specific rating decision.

After the screening, several members of the appeals board fraternized with the filmmakers. One exhibitor slyly told Ortenberg that he was especially looking forward to the director’s cut of the movie on DVD, while ratings board chief Joan Graves complimented Bello, telling her she looked much younger in person than on screen.

When I spoke to Graves, who was on hand to make the rating board’s pro-NC-17 case, she disputed the widely held belief that NC-17 has become fatally stigmatized.

Although everyone else in Hollywood views “Showgirls” as an unmitigated disaster, having cost $45 million but only making $20 million in its theatrical release, Graves told me: “ ‘Showgirls’ had a very big opening weekend and it was well advertised. The rating would still work if people used it. You should ask the studios and theater owners why they have problems with it.”

I tried to get an answer from Mary Ann Grasso, executive director of the National Assn. of Theater Owners and an appeals board member. But she wouldn’t take my calls. Grasso voted to uphold the rating, but she told Ortenberg at the screening that his film was so good that he should go out with an NC-17, assuring him that most theater owners would play the picture. Ortenberg responded coolly: “I’d like to have that in writing.”

As he later explained: “I’m not willing to be a guinea pig and put Lions Gate’s dollars at risk for a rating that’s so stigmatized.”

Not long after Kramer and Bello made their pitch, a somber-looking woman holding a clipboard delivered the bad news: The vote was 9-6 to uphold the NC-17. Kramer tried to hide his displeasure, but he’s not much of a poker player. After days of soul searching, he agreed late last week to trim the offending few seconds of film. But he remains unbowed.

“I can see myself coming before this board for the rest of my life. They’ve made a mortal enemy of me.”

I can’t say I blame him. The ratings system is in dire need of an overhaul. Kramer said he was surprised by how few powerful directors have used their clout to oppose the board’s arbitrary judgments.

With the exception of a brief flurry of activity when the Directors Guild of America proposed a new ‘adult’ rating, most filmmakers have meekly accepted the current system of self-censorship, except when their own movies were on trial.

Why couldn’t the DGA lobby have some respected directors represented on the appeals board? Then Kramer could say he’d had a truly American experience -- being judged by a jury of his peers.

*

“The Big Picture” runs every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.