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Director Kirby Dick on the secretive censors. Imagine you’re on trial, defending yourself, only to be judged by an anonymous group whose deliberations are held behind closed doors, whose unchallengeable standards are seemingly arbitrary. It’s not a system that would hold up in many courts of law, but it’s the way that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) classifies movies in the US. Since its inception in 1968, numerous filmmakers have fallen foul of an age-based classification set-up (from G to the dreaded, stigmatized NC-17) which, frankly, screams “set-up”. One that gets its knickers in a twist over explicit sexuality (especially homosexuality or female pleasure) but appears unfazed by excessive violence; and one proven to favour studio output at the expense of true independent cinema. Enter indie documentarian Kirby Dick’s This Film Is Not Yet Rated, an indignant exposé of the MPAA’s mysterious moral guardians and the system’s glaring hypocrisies. “It’s still astonishing that for nearly 30 years these people’s names have been kept secret,” puzzles Dick. “News organizations and 60 Minutes have tried to get these names but no one has made an issue out of it.”  Alongside Dick’s detective work, he interviews several penalized filmmakers, including Kimberley Pierce (Boys Don’t Cry), John Waters (A Dirty Shame) and Team America’s Matt Stone, though many others declined to appear. “Again I was very surprised by the paranoia,” says Dick. “It’s not national security. But many independent filmmakers were afraid to speak because I think they thought their future films would be harshly rated.” Dick’s criticisms are numerous: professionalizing the raters to include media experts and child psychologists; clearly defining down their criteria; and less anti-indie bias. His own solution, though, is unlikely to find favour in Hollywood or Washington. “Personally I think that the ideal ratings system would be one without age-based restrictions,” he offers. “The most important function a ratings board can perform is to give concise, comprehensive descriptions of a film’s content, whether it’s sex, nudity, violence, drug use - and let parents across the US decide what they want their children to see, rather than let ten anonymous parents in Los Angeles.” After all, who watches the watchmen? Submitting his own film, Dick learned that the MPAA had given it an NC-17 – and illegally made a copy of it. “The MPAA defines piracy as ‘any single unauthorized duplication of a copyrighted work’,” he chuckles, “so by their own definition they pirated my film.”
Leigh Singer
This Film Is Not Yet Rated, on selected release 01 September 06.
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