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How the MPAA Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. But where's wal though
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: right over there apparently.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Man, I wish people could hear in between stuff.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: I think Jerry was recording that last one.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think so. She used to give us
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a neat little outtakes, but she doesn't do that anymore.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Those days are long gone. They exist in the vault, though.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: How you doing?
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: I cood no, No, I don't know what's wrong with me.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I am off.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Today, out of your game?
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Well, I think this is the perfect podcast to set
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: you straight. Why because it's something that we both have
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: some passion about against.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think anybody who's seen the documentary this film
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: is not yet rated. Yeah, that would be very difficult
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: to not be persuaded to feel strongly about the MPAA
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: and its practices.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and at least how they do things.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: But we're going to try to be objective.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say up front, I
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: have no problem with rating a film's content so parents
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: can decide whether or not it's appropriate. I think it's valuable,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: but I think there are ways to do it that
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I don't think the MPa does. Yes, So I just
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: wanted to float that early on.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, I think that was probably smart. Okay, Okay, I
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: don't have kids, so I don't really whatever. But I mean,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I can understand the value of that kind of thing.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it gives you an idea, Like I like
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: having an idea what I'm about to see too.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: I feel like I can tell just from watching a
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: trailer of previewsing a movie poster. I'm pretty I'm pretty
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: intuitive when it comes to the marketing techniques of movies.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think like being a film nerd, it's like,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: is the New Is the New Avengers movie going to
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: be rated? R? That really tells you something, Right, it
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: won't be. No, it never would be, because PG thirteen
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: is the the that's the strikes one.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: These days, it really is. Apparently PG thirteen movies pull
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: in more money than all other ratings combined. Yeah, and
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: it's a relatively new phenomenon. You want to talk about
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: its origin, Yeah, let's do it. So Back in nineteen
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: eighty four, a man named Steven Spielberg had two movies
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: out who Steven Spielberg, Right. He directed one, Indiana Jones
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: and the Templar Doom, and he produced another, Gremlins. Yeah,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: and both of them caught He caught a lot of
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: heat from both of them.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Sure, Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene specifically.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but also the snake, the live snake at the
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: feast thing yeah. Yeah, all the snake babies, the eyeballs,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: all that stuff. And then with Gremlins, it was just
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: downright terrifying in a lot of different places, especially if
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: you're a kid. And the reason he caught heat was
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: because both of those movies were rated PG. Yeah. So
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Spielberg went to the NPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: and said, let's do something about this, because these clearly
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: aren't our movies. Yeah, but they apparently aren't PG movies either,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: so maybe we should come up with something in between.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: And PG thirteen was born.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And this was before he had all this sway
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: in the world. He was influential, but it wasn't like
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Spielberg today, who could have just waved his wand and
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: made it happen.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But I think even at the time he was important.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: He Yeah, there were very few directors at that time
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: who could have gotten something like that done.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Yea too.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: So that's where PG thirteen came from, and that, like
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: you said, that's the strike zone now. And the reason
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: why is because that is the kind of movie that
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: caters to young teenage boys, who apparently are the most
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: successful at getting girls to go to movies with them.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: So if you can get a movie rated PG thirteen, yeah,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: you're going to make a bunch of money.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus it makes sense, it's right there in the middle. Yeah,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: But the problem is is it's become a means of
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: almost advertising that rating rather than cautioning parents. It's a
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: way of attracting the audience.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: True, it's like this is some kids PG movie.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: This is as close to an R movie as you
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: can get.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: In Yeah, and I think filmmakers try to achieve that
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: rating by either scaling back their R rated movie or
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: juicing up their PG movie.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Or adding more violence. Apparently PG thirteen movies are have
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: tripled in violence over the last few decades. Yeah, and
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: they now have, according to one study, more violence than
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: there are rated counterparts.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and different kinds of violence that you didn't used
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: to see. Yeah, you know, all right, I guess we
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: should go back in time a little bit. Let's is
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: it way back machine?
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Sure, let's let's go way back in time in Hollywood.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: All right, it's nineteen twenty two. Hollywood and Vine is
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: a viable intersection in Hollywood at the time, unlike now,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: although people are going to say no, they built that
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: area back up. Yeah, and that is when the NPA
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: was born in the early nineteen twenties.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: And at the time, it was up to local authorities
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: or your state or your municipality to either stamp something
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: as moral or immoral. There were no ratings on movies.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And thanks to a guy named Will Hayes who was
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the first president of the NBA, he installed the Hayes
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Code and said, you're either going to pass or fail.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: It's either going to be stamped in moral or moral.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Right. And the reason Will Hayes, who was the NPAA president,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: came up with the Hayes Code, which was really extensive.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: It was like, if you talk about the government, it
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: always has to be good, sexuality has to be repressed,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: and just basically in hetero how you think about all
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: movies from like the thirties and forties. Yeah, squeaky clean
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: basically sure, like the division between good and evil is
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: very clearly defined and the good guy always wins. And
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: if he didn't fall into that Hayes code, like you said,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: your movie would be stamped immoral. But the whole reason
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: he came up with this code was because local municipalities
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: could pass their own obscenity laws and that could be
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: bad for business.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: So is it not even get your film exhibited?
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Right? So remember in the A c l U episode
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: where we're talking about that one, that one movie that
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: New York just the Catholics said no, you can't show
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: that here, and the a cl you went to work
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: getting getting the Catholics beaten in court.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Right, even though it was just a bad movie that
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: had something to do with well, I mean it did,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: but it shouldn't have been shown because it was so terrible.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Was it bad?
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I don't remember. Yeah, I mean it was supposed to
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: be not very good.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, but it happened like that kind of thing happened
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: a lot like local local town said no, we're not
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: going to show that movie. So Hayes figured out if
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: if Hollywood policed itself. Then they could control what, you know,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: what movies came out, and therefore everybody could make a
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: bunch of money. That's right, And that's the point of
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: the NPAA. They're the lobbying arm of six major Hollywood studios.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're there. They worked for them.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's one way to say it.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: But they and it's just too isn't it.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, there's definitely an arguments these days
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: that independent filmmakers have a much rougher time with the NBA. Yeah,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: but most of the indies too, are eventually distributed by
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the majors. Anyway, I got you. You know what I'm saying. Okay,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: So flash forward a bit in our way back machine
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: to the nineteen fifties. Things changed a little bit after
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: World War Two and people, I guess the easiest way
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: to say is people loosen up a little bit and
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: didn't mind certain elements in their entertainment any longer. Yes,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: A big example this article uses Frank Sinatra got an
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Oscar nomination for playing a heroin Addict in The Man
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: with a Golden Arm, And that couldn't have happened in
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the nineteen forties.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: No, millions of people hadn't died in World War Two yet,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: that's right. I imagine that kind of loosens you up
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: as far as the seeing Chris Wards and stuff in
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: movies goes.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like that's not a big deal, Like World War
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: two is a big deal, right, get your haunches down exactly. Yeah.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: That was the big one, the big first crack to
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: the Hayes code. Yeah, and then there were I think
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: that you said He.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Won an Oscar, right, Yeah, it was a really good
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: movie that kind.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Of opened the floodgate, so that by the end of
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: the fifties you got some like it hot and Tony
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Curtis and Jack lemon are dressed like women hitting on
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, And at that point it was pretty
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: obvious that Hayes code was dead. Yeah.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, they weren't passing the code, but they were
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: still getting released. So once something is subverted like that,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: it's dead in the water.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Right, So there was a that was fine for a
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: little while. I think the Hayes code just kind of
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: fell to the wayside and people were releasing movies without
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: any kind of moral or immoral stamp. But the rating
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: system as we understand it today hadn't come about yet. Yeah,
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: so it's kind of a limbo period until nineteen sixty
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: eight and a store owner in New York with the
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: last name of Ginsburg got busted for selling Newti maags
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: to sixteen year old boys, and he took it all
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: the way to the Supreme Court saying, you can't say
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: anything about this. There's federal laws about upsidnity, not local laws.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: In the Supreme Court said, you know what, we really
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: think it's sut to local municipalities to decide what they
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: want their miners exposed to or not. That got Hollywood's
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: attention because all of a sudden, local municipalities could decide
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: whether or not they wanted to show movies to minors
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: or not. So what was old became new again. And
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Jack Valenti, who was in charge of the MPAA, said
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: we need another system of another self policing system, and
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: he came up with the rating system that we have today.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he, I mean Jack Valenti was the head
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: of the NBA for close to forty years, and he
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: initially the intention was to stop censorship because he feared
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that the movies were going to start being censored locally
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: and so I think the origins of the NPA rating system.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: We're art centered.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Art center, but also money centered, because again, if you
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: have if you have town A showing the movie, but
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Town's B through L deciding that the movie is obscene
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: and not showing it, then you're losing that money and
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: B through L. So what Valenti came up with was
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: this idea that let us tell you what is appropriate
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: for minors or not what movie is, and we'll just
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: make a simple rating system. Yeah, gpg R.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Or X the old X yeah, and triple X, which
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: wasn't even formally a rating, it was just.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: A marketing tool.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because three exes, that's like whoa.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: I wonder if anybody ever came out with one with.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Four X yeah or double X even yeah, like yeah,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: we cut out that one part so X.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Christian, our colleague here, wrote a great blog post about
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the former X rated movie.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Is that right? Yeah, we'll have to check that out.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: That's good for brain Stuff for stuff a genius.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: On the brain stuff blog earlier this year. And you
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: actually recommended it on your blog, the X rating, Yeah
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: the best I remember it this week.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember recommending one of his things I just
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: don't remember that one.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Just good. I thought about asking him in here, but
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: then I thought, yeah, we got it nice. So yeah,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: back then it was G through X and well we'll
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: talk about you know how that changed maybe after this
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: message break. All right, so no longer do we have
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: X rayed movies. Now we have something. I guess we
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: should just go through what these ratings mean today in
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Okay, so you've got your G.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: G's always been G general audience.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Anyone can see it, Yes, and that's your your family
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Then you've got PG that means no drug use, maybe violence,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: because as we'll learn, the MPa has less problems with
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: violence and more problems with language and sex. Huge criticism,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: huge criticism PG thirteen, which we've you know, kind of
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: been through. Then you've got your R and that is
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: no one under said. This is a suggestion that no
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: one ever seventeen be admitted without a parent. And these
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: aren't laws, though, that's one thing that's important to point out.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Those are suggestions, And then theaters have policies.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's let's kind of dig into that. So none
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: of this is legally binding. Now, none of them are
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: anything more than recommendations. They're basically saying that this movie
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: has X amount of profanity or x amount of nudity,
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: or lacks any drug use or something like that. Sure,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: and so for what the MPAA thinks the average moral
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: compass of the average American thinks about these different things
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: like sex, drugs, nudity, all that stuff, this movie falls
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: into this rating. Right, And again it's not enforceable. You
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: don't even need to have a rating to release a movie.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: But if you want to get your movie in theaters,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: there's basically no theater chain out there right now, no
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: major theater chain out there right now that will show
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: an unrated movie.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: to the MPa ratings board.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: But it's de facto, but you have to do it. Yeah,
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: that's the.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Rub is that they say it's voluntary, but you actually
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: have to pay a fee to submit your movie if
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: you ever want to have it shown in theaters.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Right and the fee is anywhere from like twenty five
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars for a big budget movie to seven hundred
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: and fifty dollars for a short Yeah, and so you
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: submit your movie. Well, we'll get into it in a second.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Let's talk some more about the rest of the ratings.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there's only one more, and that's NC seventeen,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: which replaced X. And that means this is a nineteen
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: ninety and that basically means that it's for adults only
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: and you should not come in if you're under eighteen.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Right, and also means these days it's foreign or about
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: lesbian or gays. Basically, yeah, not fully, but sure, it's
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: pretty close. Yeah, and NC seventeen. The first movie to
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: come out with that was Henry in June. Yeah, I
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: have to be confused with Benny and June, and it
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: basically sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh, this
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: is X now, right, NC seventeen. If you jumble it
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: all together, it looks like X. And the whole reason
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: they came out with NC seventeen was to replace X
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: because X was associated exclusively with pornography in the minds
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: of moviegoers.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right, So let's get into this
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the actual ratings board. There's the NPAA, and then working
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: for the NPA is the Classification and Ratings Administration. Kara
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and Kara doesn't say whether your movie stinks or not.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Kara is eight to thirteen people and they are called raiders,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: and they are overseen by a senior raider, and they
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: sit down and watch these movies and take copious notes
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: on what they think based on their standards. Is I
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: don't want to say offensive, but just noteworthy, right, Like
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: maybe they're not offended, but they think the average mom
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: and sheboygan might be offended.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Right supposedly, which is a kind of a thing because
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: the whole rating system, as you just kind of pointed out,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: is a subjective.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Totally subjective. They supposedly. Here's the other rub is it's
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: all secret.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: You can find out a federal judge's name and address,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: but you can't find out who a raider is for
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: your films. It's all conducted in private. None of this
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: stuff is released. And that's one of the big rubs
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: in that documentary and with filmmakers in general, is it's
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: all done behind closed doors. There's never any explanations provided.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: These people are supposed to have kids between ages of
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: five and seventeen, but many of them do not, right,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: either have kids at all or have kids that are
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: older than eighteen.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: It basically frees them up from any accountability. Yeah, to
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: do this all in private and in secrecy.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: And until that movie by Kirby what is Kirby's last name?
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Henry and June No no, the documentary Oh oh yeah,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: this film is not yet rated.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, until Kirby Dick's this film is Not Yet Rated
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: came out, Like all of this stuff was just conjection,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: conjecture in Hollywood legend. Yeah, he was the first one
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: to really basically he tailed these people, tail them to lunch, yeah,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: to find out who they were, and eavesdrop on them,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: and like did some digging and found like these anonymous
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: people did not fall into the requirements that the NPA
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: said they did. And so not only was it in secret,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: it was it was fraudulent. Basically, this rating system, so
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: according to the standards, you submit your film, this group
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: of people, this anonymous group of people, watch it, they
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: rate it, and then they come together and vote on
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: a rating, and then they pass their their vote along
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: to a senior raider who talks to the movie's distributor
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: or director or producer says, here's the rating, here's why
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: we rated it like this, and then your face with
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: the choice. You can accept the rating. You can edit
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: your film as per the CRA's recommendations.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Take out these bad words, cut the sex scene a
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: little early, leave all the violence.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Or you can reject the rating and just release
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: your movie is unrated.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which, well, you can try to release it, but
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: since no one will show it, it's really sort of
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: a misnomer.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: Right, but it's becoming increasingly a thing again. You need
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: the rating to get your movie shown in movie theaters.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: But what happens if you don't care if your movie
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: comes out in theaters, video and demand, yeah, or just
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: releasing it to the internet.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Now, I'm curious about that. How that's going to change
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the landscape?
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Well, right now, it's a huge threat to the NPAA
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: because all of the power they wield is found in
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: this rating system.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: And if for theaters, yes, if no one's going to theaters.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Then the MPAA loses all that power, which is a
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: big deal, especially now because the NPAA is needed more
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: than ever as a lobbying group because of online piracy,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: which we'll talk about some more. So it's a very
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: precarious time for the MPAA right now, and it's a
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: terrible time for them to be under as much scrutiny
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: and public attack and critique as they are. So it's
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: and their trunk is flailing and they're honking.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: That is true. One thing I should point out is
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I said, is that there's no accountability. That's what the
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: NPA says. It's the good thing about the secrecy is
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: that it frees them up. That anonymity does. It frees
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: them up from accountability. I just don't agree, right, Okay.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: So if you want to appeal, there was apparently a
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: change made in response to Kirby Dick's movie the documentary
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: before if you were appealing your rating, which is very difficult,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: almost never was done and.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Well you never want that's for sure, right.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And when you were appealing, you couldn't reference any other film.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: It was totally done in a vacuum, which is pretty preposterous.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that's the only way to be able to
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: tell us like, wait a minute, if you said this
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: about this, then why not this for my movie?
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Which meant that there was no real standard yeah that
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: you could point to, or there were standards you could
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: point to, they just would be considered.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or at the very least, if they do have
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: written standards, they don't release them, so you don't even
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: know what they are.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Right. So the MPAA is they've got their rating system,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: they've got the appeals process.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Which was also in secret, unless that's changed, right I think.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I think the appeals board not only was the appeals
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: board and secret, but they weren't even just raiders. They
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: were people from the industry.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Right, and the Theater Owners Association exactly, whereas the people
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: who were raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the movie industry
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: and are just like average ordinary.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Parents representing your Middle America. We'll just call it, even
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: though I think that's insulting.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: The thing is, though, is a lot of people criticize
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: the NPA and say, these raiders are really representing the
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: six major studios who rake in ninety five percent of
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: the ten point nine billion dollars made in the United States. Yeah,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: in theaters alone, just ticket sales, not DVD or anything
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, And that's what the NPAA does in
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: addition to rating. They are, like we said, the lobby
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: arm for these six studios, that's.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Right, and they I guess we should talk about piracy now. Huh.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: That's one of their other big asides from rating movies,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: they are heavy in the lobby against well, especially now
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: with online piracy, because the digital distribution network is it
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: seems like the way forward as far as distribution goes, right,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: it's the futre. It's not the future, it's the present
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and the future.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: And the NPAA has a they're accused of basically trying
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: to quell new technology, yeah, by just saying like, well,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: let's just keep people from peer to peer file sharing
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: in total, yeah, so that they can't steal movies. In part,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: and if you go back to the early eighties, Jack
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Valente was known to have railed and lobbied against the
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: legality of VCRs.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: People are just gonna be recording things and handing them.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Out to their friends exactly. So there was a The
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: NPA is a long history of basically like just doing
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: anything at can to stifle innovation in order to protect
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: the profits of these big movie studios. The other problem
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: with them lobbying in favor of these six movie studios
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: is that they inherently have a conflict of interest against
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: the studios that are not part of these six that
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: they represent, but whose movies they still rate, so they've
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: been accused of more scrupulously or scrutinously rating the movies
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: of rival studios or foreign studios when assigning a rating.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's why filmmakers call consistently for transparency. It's
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I don't think there are many filmmakers out there saying
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: should be no rating, we should just maybe some like
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: a large fontrier, you know, or Werner Hertzog. They're probably
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: like nota eight things at all. But I think they
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: just want transparency, like open it up and let everyone
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: know how this is all done, who these people are,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: and give us an idea on what in the world
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: we're submitting to voluntarily, quote unquote. Pretty interesting.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: So you were talking about online piracy and with digital
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: distribution being a big deal now, the MPa is needed
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: more than ever because they have to lobby Congress to
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: fight online piracy at a time when more and more
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: people are distributing online and going around the MPAA. So
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: it's losing its power, but it needs its power more
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: than ever. So, like we said, it's a precarious time
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: for the MPAA. And they tried a few things. They
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: were successful with the what was the first one in
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: two thousand, the Digital Sofa No, the Digital Millennium Right Act, right,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: which basically that up until then it wasn't a federal
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: crime to share movies on peer to peer networks. Right,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: that one did it and they got that passed. The
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: MPAA lobbied and got that passed.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they've cracked down on camcorder recording, yeap. Like when
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: you're in New York City and someone has that brand
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: new copy of Godzilla on video cassette for you, Yeah,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: that's because if you've seen Seinfeld, someone went and sat
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: in that theater with a camera recorder and just made
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: a stupid, awful quality pirated version.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it says that those are the most common.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: I guess I kind of believe that they're also the
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: worst quality. Like sometimes people will like get up and
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: move in front of the camera, like they go to
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the bathroom or something, and.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I've never seen one, but I think they're terrible.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah much. I don't want to say more common, but
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: probably more common these days are like copies of screeners. Yeah,
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Like they send out DVDs to everybody who's members of
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: the Academy to vote on movies and so around OSCAR
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: timer before Oscar time, it seems like the Internet gets
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: flooded with way more high quality copies of these major
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: movies that are up for awards.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think now they have, thanks to the NBA,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: have something coded to your name now on your copy.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: So like they'll know who leaked it or whatever. I
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: think so not surprised by that. Apparently, if you want
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: to show Frozen at your church, yeah, you better have
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: a public performance license because it is illegal to show
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: a movie outside of your home.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that surprised me. But there are a lot of
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: especially in the summertime, a lot of community screenings, like
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: every city now has, you know, Atlanta shows them, and
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I think at Oakland Cemetery some other places in New York.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: They have them all over the place, and technically, yeah,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: they're supposed to have a license to do so, I'm
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: sure they do the big ones.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the big ones, I'm sure do.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: But like at your community pool and you want to
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: show et and.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: The Feds could come kick the gate down around the pool.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: I bet everybody.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: I bet they don't love HBO these days because you
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: know HBO go people steal that. They're just like, hey, dude,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: what's your log in.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Oh right, yeah, and.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: HBO came out and they're like, who cares?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people are watching it.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like go watch a True Detective. Maybe you'll sign
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: up for HBO, yeah because you liked it, or maybe
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: you'll just support the show period on social media, even
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: though you're getting it for free. Like we're making enough
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: money basically.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, And that's something that a lot of people say,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: you know, film industry, we don't really feel that bad
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: for you, Yeah, Seawan Austin sit down, because you guys
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: made ten point nine billion dollars in America in ticket
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: sales alone in twenty thirteen. We don't feel that bad
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: about this whole conundrum that the MPAA is facing.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: What Sean asked and Steel he was voices Yeah, yeah,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: oh okay, yeah, I don't think I knew that.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah he was. I can't remember the There was like
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: a whole kind of push an anti piracy pushed a
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: few years back, and part of it yeah yeah, and
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: he looked really mad about things too. But speaking of piracy,
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: I remember there was a story that came out recently.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: It was if you think about it, at first, it's
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: like wah wah, but then if you really kind of
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: lended some thought. It's really disturbing. There were there was
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: a report of prisoners at a prison being shown pirated movies,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: and some of the prisoners were there for pirrating movies,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: and like, really think about the injustice behind that. Yeah,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: like that's just crazy town. Imagine if you've been like
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: selling counterfeit first, and you go to prison and all
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: of the all the guards are wearing counterfeit for coats.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: It'd be pretty swing in prison.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: It'd be weird, but it would also be unjust.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, true.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: But in relation to this, it's just more and more
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: widespread every day. It feels like it's it's a losing battle.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: I think that the NPAA is fighting right now.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Well, I think I read somewhere today that they I
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: think they might release a few of the Raiders' names
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: per film, not all like thirteen, right, But I need
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: to look up that, look that up again, because that
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't see the why releasing a
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: three out of thirteen names does anybody any good?
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: It does zero good. Yeah, And speaking of doing zero good,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: this there's kind of a new attachment to the rating
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: system that they have now. It's called check the box. Yeah,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: and it's it's basically a brief description of why a
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: movie is, like PG thirteen. Yeah, so it'll say like
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: intense sci fi action or something like that, or some
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: drug use. Yeah, that kind of thing. And some critics
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: of the NPAA say it's just basically like shooting a
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: laser beam into like a fifteen year old boy's brain,
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: like brief nudity. Come see it PG thirteen, Check it out, kid,
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: And I think a lot of people are looking at
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: it like it's it's just kind of a disingenuous advertisement,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: cynical advertisement, because the NPAA is accused of not regulating
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: or even potentially directly marketing to kids under the age
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: of the movies that are being advertised. So like you're
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: seeing a lot of ads for like R rated movies
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: on websites that are like very popular among like the
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: seventeen and undercrowd. There's a lot of tie ins for
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: PG thirteen movies with like kids toys for kids who
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: are under who are under thirteen. And so there's like
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: this idea that there's the NPA supposedly serving America's moral compasses. Yeah,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: but really at the same time, they're undermining that morality
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: that they're supposedly defending, yeah, by marketing and exploiting kids.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be like a cigarette company having a cartoon
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: animal as their mascot.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine?
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Be weird? Well, one thing about the subjectivity of it
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: and the fact that it is a closed book and
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: they filmmakers don't even know, you know, how to tailor
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: their movie to achieve a certain rating, I mean to
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: within a certain degree. But they've learned how to manipulate
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: it because there is no set standard by if you
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: watch that film as not yet rated. And you've heard
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: plenty of stories over the years about filmmakers intentionally putting
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: in things that they never intend to be in the
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: final movie. Oh yeah, just to sort of distract from
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: some of the other things. So they'll shoot something kind
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: of really outrageous to get the MPA's Raiders haunches up
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: and what they were never going to keep that part anyway, right,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: So they're subverting the system because there is no set standard.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're just the stuff they want to keep
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: in is comparatively exactly more palatable.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: And if you don't have the set standard, where you
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: can go and I wonder what those sheets look like
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: on the interior, you know. I mean that's the great mystery. Yeah,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: surely they have their own interior standards. They're not just
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: like watch it and see what you think.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: Well, they have group discussions too, man, I'd love to
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: sit in on those.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: So the I read Another criticism of MPa is that
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: the difference between PG thirteen movies and our movies these
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: days is the profanity and the sexuality. That they're similar
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: in violence, if not more violent in PG thirteen movies,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: and that this is kind of messed up, that the
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: NPAA has very little problem with violence. Yeah, but when
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: it comes to bad words or sexuality of almost any
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: nature except for women being objectified and men being gratified, Yeah,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: then the MPAA suddenly puckers up. Well.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in any a woman achieving receiving sexual gratification, or
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: a homosexual couple, yeah.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Virtually like guaranteed or depending on how they do it,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: are if it's coming out of like one of the
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: major studios.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: So in other words, a man can receive pleasure from
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: a woman, and of course it's scrutinized somewhat, because any
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: kind of sex is more heavily scrutinized than violence, right,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: but if a woman does like you said, or if
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: it's a gay couple, it's all over so homophobic, misogynistic.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: You decide right, and fetishistic of violence, you know.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, here's one example. There's a great article called
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: don't Expect any major changes to the NPA rating system
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen. Yeah, and it's basically Chris Dodd, who's
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: the new head and the gang, digging in and saying,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: you know what, we talked to your average parents and
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: we pull them and this is what they want. But
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: they release No, none of those studies are released. Yeah,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: none of those conversations are released. A movie like Filamina,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: which you saw, was rated at R. Yeah. It was
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: about a lady looking for a long lost sun.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: It was so far from an R movie, it was ridiculous.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it had a couple of F bombs in it,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: so they cut those out and they bring it to
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: a PG thirteen. You might think, who cares cut up
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the F bombs make it PG thirteen, But there's something
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: bigger going on here, you know.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a great AV Club article about how just
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: totally out of step a lot of the ratings are
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: and they have fifteen movies listed and basically talk about
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: their ratings, like the first one. They talk about once. Yeah,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: that romantic. It wasn't like a romantic comedy, wasn't.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: No, I would say it was a other sweet just
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: a modern day romance told through music. It wasn't a musical,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: but there are a lot of musical numbers.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Highly inoffensive love story. Yeah, very sweet movie. It had
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: the same rating as Hostile Too, which is basically torture porn.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: They both got the same rating.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we should read this first line from the av club.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: In early summer of two thousand and seven, two films
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: were released with our ratings. One featured a scene where
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling while another
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: naked woman slashes her with a scyth and bays in
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: her blood. The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: falling in love and opting not to act on it.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Like there was never any sex scene. They didn't even
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: get together. Really, Nope, they're both rated.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Are both rated are because of profanity.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Rushmore rated R for the uh scene at the end,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: whether Max is putting on the play the Vietnam play
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and there is a shot of a couple of little
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: kids looking at on the set. There's some Playboy centerfolds
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: up in the locker, yep, like on the Vietnam set,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: and it shows these little kids like looking at those
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: like a twelve year old would probably do.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: And it got an R for that, got an R
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: for that. Happiness Todd Solins one of my favorite movies
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: of all time. Yeah, they tried to give it an
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: NC seventeen rating, and he said, you know what, I'm
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: not cutting anything. You can just go take a long
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: walk off a short pier, is what I think, he
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: famously said to them. Yeah, and he released his movie
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: as unrated.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: Oh really, yep, I don't think I knew that.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Wait to go, Todd Solins.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Or if you're looking at some serious homophobia, The Great
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine movie and Longtime Companion features no real
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: sex acts at all, nothing explicit. In fact, the AV
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Club says it could show on network TV today with
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: just a few alterations. But it was about a gay
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: couple and uh so I got an NC seventeen.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There was something called Afternoon Delight, which was a
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: movie about a woman who hires a giglow and it
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: apparently is heavy on the the woman receiving sexual gratification.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: It got an R rating despite and it got an
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: OUR rating after apparently the director cut a lot of
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: stuff out and the director said, what the hey after
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Wolfe of Wall Street came out.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: Like have you seen this movie with like some very.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Graphic apparent sex scenes between a man and a woman.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: But Leonardo DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: So it's fine. It's an R, right, blue is the
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: warmest color.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Last year that a teenage lesbian love story, and
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: since seventeen, yeah, got a lot of attention, and there
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: were some theaters that allowed high school age kids to
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: go see that anyway.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: Because again, this isn't law, it's not binding, it's up
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: to the theaters.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just so strange that such a small group
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: of people have such influence on such a large industry.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: And yeah, the secret the more you dig into it,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: the more conflicts of interest arise, and the more arbitrary
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: the standards become, the more blood boiling it is. I
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: highly recommend you go read some stuff like rated R
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: for ridiculous by Kirby Dick his Little uh yeah, his
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: little op ed about the MPAA that one US News
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: and World Report article you wrote or suggested it was good.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: I wish I wrote it.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Had you been there, would have been used correctly.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Oh did they misuse it?
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: What? Yeah? I know?
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Terrible. So the MPa will defend themselves and they say
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: that there's no such bias and that we all these
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: objectionable scenes are rated on the quality and how graphic
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: it is. But if you just look at the you'd
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: have to be a dummy not to see these correlations, right,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: And the fact that they don't seem to care that
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: much about violence in this age where I don't know,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: does it influence people to go shoot up a school?
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Who knows?
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Around, Yes, but what was it?
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: It's like somebody unsuccessfully tries to carry a bomb onto
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: a plane in their shoe. We all take our shoes off, right.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: There's like thirty something school shootings after Columbine and absolutely
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: nothing's changed.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Or the onion article that's going around too now,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: is this is something that can't be prevented, says the
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: only country where this kind of thing happens all the time,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: something like that.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Huh, I'm paraphrasing, Oh yeah, that's the onion.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good stuff, MPa. Keep keep doing the fighting, the
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: good fight.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Go check out, like, just go start reading up
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: on it. It's funny how much we just take this
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: stuff for granted, but when just start digging just slightly
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: beneath the surface at the very least. See this film
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: is not yet rated. It's really good. Yeah, really engrossing.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: And you know, for every one hundred documentaries that come out,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: what five of them are like really great? Sure, most
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: of them are pretty good, some are terrible. So any
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: really good one is worth seeing just in and of itself.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: If you want to learn more about the MPAA, type
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: those letters into the search part housetifforks dot com. And
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: I said, search parts, it's time for listener mail. Uh.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this wild Parrots. Josh mentioned in the
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: Tattoo podcast that he had heard parrots like to hang
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: together when free, and I wanted to burst in the
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: podcast booth and tell you about the wild pay of
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: San Francisco. I'm not going to get into it except
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: to say that, over the course of my life, the
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: parrots in San Francisco are a sort of living legend
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: that one would occaionally get the privilege of spotting now
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: and then. However, about three years ago, I moved in
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: with my aunt in the little San Francisco suburb of Brisbane,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: and apparently the famous flocks of parrots were also making
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: their home there. Since it was warmer, unless windy, these
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: parrots were often hanging right outside my bedroom window, which
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: is pretty amazing or no, she says, amusing. I say
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: it's amazing, but also somewhat annoying, especially since my first
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: son was just a little guy then and a very
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: light sleeper. And these suckers are loud, that is true,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: they are very loud. Also, guys, I'm sending you the
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: link to watch the preview of the two thousand and
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: three documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. So I
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: didn't know there was a documentary.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: I've heard that. Yeah, I've heard of that before. I
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: never knew what it was about.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Amy. I will check that out.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for writing it. Yeah, thanks a lot. Amy.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: If you have a documentary recommendation, we are always interested
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: in those.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Heck.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can tweet them to us at s YSK podcast.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: You can post them on Facebook. Dot com, slash stuff
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: you Should Know, and you can send us an email
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: to Stuff Podcast at houstuffworks dot com and as always,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: joined us at our home on the web, the Beautiful
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know dot com.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot com.