This Film is Not Yet Rated

I really enjoy exposé films about secret practices, especially when it comes to the media. I was an ardent fan of documentaries like Outfoxed, Who is Alan Smithee?, Boffo and even the underrated Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, and next weekend another film is opening which continues this tradition.

On September 1st, This Film is Not Yet Rated shines a bright light onto the governing body of film, the MPAA. For years, the people who decide what movies are rated have been able to hide behind anonymity and vague assertions to make decisions for the public, and on numerous occasions the board has given a lot of mixed signals and seeming preferential treatment given to bigger studios and more powerful directors, because an R-rated movie is commercially-viable, but a rating of NC-17 is in effect, a crippling blow for most movies, and because big studios have so much invested in these movies, they sometimes drastically alter these movies(usually for sexual content) to get them a Restricted rating.

If you've been reading my blog for a while you know that censorship really pisses me off, especially when it is done with a double standard, which it seems the MPAA operates on.

So how did documentarian Kirby Dick shed some light on this cloistered and powerful organization. He hired a private detective agency to gather information on the members so that he could confront a number of them to get a better sense of how decisions are actually made in their chambers, while at the same time talking to directors and actors about their experiences with the MPAA. And because these discussions may have footage that the MPAA already had issue with, it is likely this movie is ironically enough going to receive an NC-17 or have no rating at all, which may drastically impact its distribution. Since censorship is one of my hot-button issues, I thought it was important for me to generate a little more word-of-mouth attention for the film in any little way I could. While I couldn't link to the trailer from the movie's site, I did find it on YouTube, which will give you a good idea of what the movies all about, though I think the theme of who is watching the watchmen is appropriate.

So if you have an interest in seeing the best movies you can or in censorship, I hope you seek this movie out.

Tags: this film is not yet rated, kirby dick, kevin smith, mpaa, jack valenti, censorship, restricted, nc-17, john waters, watching the watchmen, puritan, art film, double standard, sex, drugs, violence