What The Doc?

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is a documentary that takes us through the MPAA ratings board and how it works. Director Kirby Dick interviews a number of filmmakers (Darren Aronofsky, Kimberley Peirce, Matt Stone, John Water, among others) about perceived biases between Hollywood blockbusters and independent films, homosexual and heterosexual sexual situations, and violence and sexual content. He explores a lot of differences, complete with related clips from many of the movies being discussed.

The MPAA ratings board is very secretive, and for the most part identities are kept secret, with the exception of the head of the board. The MPAA does state that their board is composed of average American parents (with children between the age of 5 and 17) who serve for less than 5 years. So Kirby Dick hires a private investigator to figure out the identities of the board members. Some of the discoveries are interesting such as divorcee Anthony Hey (two children: ages 28 and 30) and screenwriter Howard Friedkin who has no children. Wikipedia has a list of the known information of the board members in 2005.

After Kirby Dick does his research, he finishes This Film Is Not Yet Rated, with the information of MPAA board members, and then he sends it to the MPAA for them to review. Not surprisingly, they weren’t impressed with his research and gave his documentary an NC-17 (no one under the age of 17 can watch it) rating. Kirby Dick appeals the rating that he receives, but to no avail.

The documentary changes when he includes his appeal in it, so he is not able to release This Film Is Not Yet Rated with a rating unless he resubmits it to the MPAA, which he has no intention of doing.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated shows us an interesting and dark side of Hollywood film industry, the “almighty” MPAA. Kirby Dick explores exactly how unfair and biased they are with their ratings. It is a very entertaining documentary, that every film (not just documentry) buff should watch.

related links
IMDB | Wikipedia | Producer Eddie Schmidt’s blog

Trailer

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Hollywood, documentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.