A farcical journey behind the closed doors of America's archaic and wholly secretive MPAA ratings board, Kirby Dick's This Film is Not Yet Rated is at once hilarious and ironic. JACOB POWELL examines the hypocrisy.


EVER WONDERED what makes one film, choc-full of gung-ho machismo violence or perhaps overt gender or racial stereotyping, worthy of an M rating, whilst another far more considered effort, which contains a measure nudity and sex, gets stamped with an R18? Most of America’s independent filmmakers certainly have, and so has director Kirby Dick. In fact, Dick was so interested that he hired a private investigator to help him get to the bottom of the issue in his latest cinematic offering – This Film is Not Yet Rated.

Not Yet Rated picks away at a scab on the forehead of the American film industry. Kirby Dick’s documentary attempts to uncover the mystery surrounding the film rating process set up by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and their completely anonymous board (bar the director) comprised of “concerned parents of school age children” who, by their own admission, have no special interest in or understanding of, cinema.

Dick’s bias in this film is unashamedly clear; he makes no bones about siding with the ‘little guys’. What rescues this documentary from being an unbalanced, unreasoned stab at ‘the establishment’ is the director’s wry sense of irony, which is certainly put to good use. The director cuts interviews with various independent filmmakers, who express understandable exasperation at the MPAA ratings board decisions, into his almost farcical journey to uncover the highly secret identities of the ratings board members.

On top of this, add the fact that the MPAA ratings board is working to the corporate agenda of the major Hollywood studios and you can see why many American filmmakers are pushing the injustice ‘button’.

One such filmmaker, interviewed by Dick, is Kimberly Peirce, writer/director of Boys Don’t Cry (1999). Her film was initially rated as an NC-17 (equivalent of an R18 film in NZ) and was reclassified with an R rating only after editing was carried out to remove certain ‘offensive’ parts as stipulated by the board. You may be thinking: “So what?” But the difference between these two ratings is immense in terms of the getting your movie seen (and hence making it financially viable). Many distributors in the US will simply not touch any film rated NC-17 and therein lies the sting. Although getting the rating is “voluntary” your film won’t be seen without one – and the right one at that.

Much of the interview footage sees the subjects waxing lyrical on the probable reasons for the ratings decisions – including a ‘fear’ of female sexual pleasure! Dick, however, highlights the overarching problem, which is the lack of any real consistent system or process for the ratings board decisions. He emphasises this point effectively by playing, side by side, relevant portions of two films that ended up being rated differently. You guessed it: the major studio film gets classified R and the independent film gets classified NC-17; with very patchy or non-existent reasoning for the decision.

While watching Not Yet Rated I couldn’t help but think of our own ‘Society for the Promotion of Community Standards’ (SPCS) whose ugly, conservative head inevitably rears up at film festival time and decries one or two films presented in the programme (eg. 9 Songs and Y Tu Mamá También). Almost as inevitably, these films become some of the biggest sellers due to the sensationalist press created around them. The fact that they get the green light is, in part, a credit to our own government censor. Now imagine if you will that our censor is to be replaced by the SPCS. This gives you some idea of the situation facing filmmakers in Hollywood.

Encasing his ‘document of critique’ is a psychological thriller par excellence (excuse the hyperbole) which gels the other constituent pieces of this film together and provides many of movie’s comedic moments. Dick even goes so far as to ‘audition’ a number of private investigators for the job of tracing the identities of the board members. He eventually settles on a lesbian woman whose daughter and partner accompany them on their ‘missions’ if they happen to be at home when they head off.

The final irony occurs when Dick presents his almost complete film for classification to the selfsame MPAA ratings board that he has just critiqued and bio’ed. Simply brilliant.

Not Yet Rated is not a movie to bowl you over with its cinematography, performances or coverage of humanitarian issues. However, it is compulsory viewing for anyone interested in the process of filmmaking, or those who have thoughts about societal controls exercised by the powerful (in this case the big Hollywood studios) over all others in a given sphere of life. Even if your interest is only passing, you will come away both entertained and informed, with a feeling of how lucky we often are in New Zealand and a smile or two to boot.