Ain't nuthin' but a G rating

Warning: The following post contains spoilers about the movie Silent Running. 

Nuclear explosions. Murder. Suicide. The end of all plant life on Earth.

Just what your average six-year-old seeks out when they go to the movies.

The last thing I noticed as Silent Running finished playing on my Netflix last night was that screen they used to devote to displaying the film's rating, back in the old days. And I was surprised -- nay, shocked -- to note that the film had been rated G.

Not G for Grown-Up or G for Geriatric. G for General Audiences. You know, the rating that almost doesn't even exist anymore because it's so lame. The rating that has been almost entirely supplanted by PG, even in the case of animated movies.

In 1972, apparently, things were different. In 1972, General Audiences could go see a movie set in a dystopian future, in which our planet has been totally deforested, and the only remaining plants exist inside geodesic domes affixed to large space vessels. General Audiences could go see a movie where an order comes down from high command to launch these domes a safe distance from the space vessels, and then detonate them via nuclear blast, so the vessels could return to commercial use. General Audiences could go see a movie where a devoted botanist who's been caring for these plants kills the other three crew members on his ship, one by crushing his windpipe with a shovel, the other two by trapping them inside one of the other domes before it detonates. General Audiences could go see a movie where this devoted botanist eventually takes his own life by destroying the space vessel, before first launching the one remaining dome into space where it will be tended for the rest of eternity by a little worker robot named Dewey.

In other words, a really good movie with an astonishing performance by Bruce Dern, but a movie that is nonetheless not appropriate for a six-year-old.

Just to be clear, the MPAA's official explanation for the G rating is: "Nothing that would offend parents for viewing by children." Um, as a parent, I'll have to get back to you on Silent Running.

Those were simpler times, of course, and to be fair, nothing in Silent Running is truly graphic. The shovel strangulation scene, for example, is staged so awkwardly -- though I can't tell if it's poor technique or a specific attempt to avoid the appearance of graphic violence -- that it appears to be missing frames. The most graphic thing in the movie, in fact, is a nasty knee injury the devoted botanist gets, which bleeds all over the place. The blood is such a fake bright red, though, that it too is a few degrees removed from realism.

Still, I can hardly imagine the current MPAA board sitting there and deciding that no ratings restrictions whatsoever should be placed on this movie. The simple phrase "adult content" would be enough for this movie to get a PG, and likely a PG-13, in this day and age.

The fact that this movie is the inspiration for a mocking post should not be misconstrued. After it started slowly with an undeniable dose of dated cheese (the Joan Baez songs probably did that all by themselves), the movie became one of the more interesting science fiction films I've seen in a while, delivering excellently on sci-fi's first promise to use otherworldly elements to comment on very real problems in our present world. The nascent environmental movement certainly had a friend in Silent Running, I can tell you that.

I was also interested to see how many newer movies owe a debt to this movie, everything from A.I.: Artificial Intelligence to The Fountain to Sunshine to Moon. With 2001: A Space Odyssey effects guru Douglas Trumbull at the helm, the film also looks damn good for something made in the early 1970s.

I suppose if I had been a six-year-old in 1972, I would have wanted to see it -- though I should probably immediately revoke that contention and acknowledge that the same six-year-old who was bored by 2001 and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as has recently been discussed, probably would have been bored by this as well.

And that gets at the other function, hinted at above, of a rating: It's not only protecting children from things they shouldn't see, it's advising parents of what they'll actually want to see.

Then again, it's called the movie "business" for a reason. If you can squeeze a few extra bucks out of parents for a movie that will bore their children, and their children aren't disturbed by scenes of implied windpipe-crushing, then go for it.

What you can fellate and what you can't fellate

I watched Spring Breakers for the third time last night.

Informally, I believe this is the soonest after its release date I've seen a movie three times since I saw Pulp Fiction four times in the theater. That would be -- gasp -- 20 years ago now.

It's not the soonest I've seen a movie for the third time after the first time I saw it -- that would be Ruby Sparks, which I saw for the third time in just under 14 months back in February. My Spring Breakers viewing last night would make the third time in just over 14 months, dating back to its theatrical run. However, Ruby Sparks actually came out about five months before I saw it, so there's a slight (through probably meaningless) distinction there.

Either way, it confirms something I already knew -- I really like this movie.

And whenever you rewatch movies you really like, you are bound to come at them from slightly new angles, and to think about slightly new things.

There will be some spoilers from here on out -- not only about Spring Breakers, but also about Killer Joe -- so beware.

If you understood the previous spoiler alert -- and the title of this post -- you know where I'm going with this. Yes, I focused on the scene where Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson force-feed James Franco the barrels of two guns.

At first it seems as though Franco is an unwitting victim to this incident of sexualized humiliation, and I feel pretty sure that Vanessa and Ashley were kind of playing it by ear on their actual intentions with him -- after all, there's a room full of money and guns at their finger tips, and we've already seen what they're willing to do for money. But then Franco kind of empowers himself in the scenario by actively beginning to fellate one of the barrels -- wrapping his lips around it and sucking it dry, as it were. Then the girls crack a smile and the tension is defused. Moments later, Alien tells the girls (I had to look up their actual character names, which are Candy and Brit) that they are his soul mates.

The movie got an R rating, despite this rather graphic scene.

Not all movies that feature a scene of enforced simulated fellatio are quite so lucky. Take William Friedkin's Killer Joe. Another scuzzy modern classic featuring white trash "gangster life," so to speak, Killer Joe has a lot to recommend it -- a captivating lead performance by Matthew McConaughey, terrific supporting performances and a hilarious sense of black humor. It also has a gonzo final scene, which includes -- famously -- a scene where McConaughey forces Gina Gershon to give a blow job to a chicken drumstick.

NC-17 on that one. The appeal of the rating was rejected, so instead of getting rid of the scene that everyone would be talking about, they just released it that way.

The initial instinct would be to make some comment about how the MPAA always cares more about sex than violence when issuing ratings, which was a main contention of Kirby Dick's film This Film Is Not Yet Rated. It's no surprise, this perspective would argue, that the scene with the gun caused them less objection. Then you might surmise that the chicken leg is somehow more off-putting, as it is made of organic material while the gun is just metal.

Of course, these surface-level readings would both be quite incorrect. Both are violent scenes, actually, but only Killer Joe features the scene where a) it is quite clearly not consensual, and b) it's a man committing an act of violence against a woman. That's the trump card ... as well it should be.

In doing a little research for this post I discovered that Samantha (Kim Cattrall) fellates a hookah pipe in Sex and the City 2, but that obviously makes it in as an R because a) it's fully voluntary, and b) Samantha is about the most ribald character ever committed to the big or small screen.

The one certified, definite no-no among fellatible objects: the penis. You can't have a discussion like this without referencing The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo's scandalous film in which Chloe Sevigny actually sucks his penis on camera. No fakery, no implied mouth-to-penis action -- an actual blow job. That one never had a chance at an R.

There must be some prominent examples I'm missing ... let me know about them in the comments.

A whole different classification

One of the topics I've been concentrating on in my early Australia days is the differences in phrasing.

For example, movies don't have ratings here. They have "classifications."

In fact, there's a little promo that plays before most movies that indicates the importance of making sure a particular film is suited to your children. The tagline is "Check the classification." There is a corresponding website run by the Australian government.

At first I thought it was just Australia trying to be different. I thought "What's wrong with the word 'rating'? Go jump in your lorry and piss off."

Then I got to thinking that "rating" is not a particularly accurate term in the first place. Forget for a second that you have grown up coming to think of film ratings as G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17. Doesn't the word "rating" seems like it should have a lot more to do with how good the movie is than the eyes for which it is intended? "How do you rate that film on a scale of 1 to 10?" That kind of thing.

Neither is "classification" perfect, though. It sounds more to do with genre than appropriateness. I'd say "classification" might be "horror" or "horror comedy" or "horror comedy musical documentary."

So what is the right term? I'll have to think on that.

For now, though, let me explain what the classifications are here in Australia. They're not so surprising, except for some seemingly meaningless distinctions that make them a bit eccentric. There are longer explanations of the classification, but I'll just give the briefer ones that appear when you hover the mouse over the classification on the website.

G - General - "Suitable for everyone."
My comment: No surprises there.

PG - Parental Guidance - "Not recommended for children under 15; may contain some material that children find confusing or upsetting."
My comment: This would be comparable to our PG, but it seems stricter. I don't think anyone would say that our PG movies would provide a challenge to children all the way up to 15. 

M - Mature - "Not recommended for children under 15; may include moderate levels of violence, language or themes."
My comment: Moderate levels of themes -- so, this one has a moderate dose of redemption, while this one has a smidge of overcoming obstacles? I understand the distinction they are trying to make between PG and M, but it would seem more useful if they would change the age cutoff. When both have the same age cutoff but each has a different description of why it's not recommended, it tends to muddy things. Also, "mature" seems too advanced a term for what they are really trying to indicate here. Our equivalent is probably PG-13.

MA15+ - Mature Audiences - "Restricted - unsuitable for persons under 15; may contain strong content."
My comment: Now things are getting a bit screwy. This would also be like our PG-13 except for the term "restricted," which doesn't come into play in our rating system until you get to R, whose cutoff is age 17. Plus, what's the meaningful distinction between the descriptors "mature" and "mature audiences"? Is the first group not a group of movie viewers, but maybe savings bonds? In the fuller description it also says that persons may be required to show proof of age in order to purchase a video game or attend a movie with this classification. So where does that leave us for ...

R18+ - Restricted - "Restricted to adults."
My comment: Okay, so this is our R, and it changes the age to clearly indicate 18. But because the term "restricted" is being used a little loosely -- coming into play as soon as age 15 with the MA:15+ classification -- it begs the question of what does it really mean to "restrict" a person. Especially when there is this classification ...

X18+ - Restricted - "Restricted to adults - contains sexually explicit material."
My comment: This would be our NC-17 ... except that it's actually our XXX. The website goes on to explain "This classification is a special and legally restricted category which contains only sexually explicit content. That is, material which shows actual sexual intercourse and other sexual activity between consenting adults. X18+ films are only available for sale or hire in the ACT and the NT." To translate that last part, only available in the Australian Capital Territory (which includes the country's capital, Canberra) and the Northern Territory (which includes such cities as Darwin and Alice Springs). This means that pornographic movies are part of the conventional classification system, which the NPAA in our country doesn't deign to do. But it's also not as straightforward as it appears to be; I live in Victoria, and I have noted pornographic movies for sale in a video store in downtown Melbourne. Though who knows; maybe the movies I assumed were showing "actual sexual intercourse" were not doing that after all. And where does this leave NC-17? There basically isn't an NC-17 in Australia, unless you consider it to be R18+, which I don't think you do because such films as Hostel and Evil Dead are R18+

Doing a little more searching, it appears that our R's in the U.S. split up between MA15+ and R18+. For example, Kick-Ass and Drive -- both definitely R's in our country -- are MA15+'s here. Each of those movies have at least one scene of such extreme violence that you can't imagine a country, in good conscience, allowing a 15-year-old to see them. Yet Australia does.

It's one of many conundrums about this country, apparent contradictions built into its fabric. In some ways, this is a very conservative country. There is a famously long list of films that were banned in Australia upon first release, including Pink Flamingos, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salo. The uncut version of Human Centipede II: Full Sequence is still banned, as is A Serbian Film (though I'm pretty sure that's banned in the U.S. also). On the other hand, language standards are considerably more permissive than in the U.S. The local "alternative" music station (called Triple J) regularly plays songs containing profanity, and even DJ's themselves say the word "shit" on the air (just heard this yesterday). Regarding Kick-Ass in particular, the use of the C-word -- considered by some (including me) to be possibly the most universally offensive word in the English language -- permanently removed it from possibly being given a PG-13 in the U.S. Here, some Australians call each other this word in an "affectionate" way -- which may be how Kick-Ass was allowed to get "only" an MA15+.

I'll try to make note of more of these classifications as I see the movies.

As for my alternative term to "classification" and "rating," well, how about "flag"? How is the movie "flagged"?

Eh, I guess I'll leave this one up to the professionals.

No restrictions

Earlier this week I wrote about a movie (Mama) I was surprised to see get a PG-13 rating. Now I'm writing about one I'm surprised to see get an R.

Who would have thought that any studio desperate to capitalize on the dying embers of the Twilight phenomenon would slap a restrictive R rating on the same type of movie?

You could argue that Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is not going for the same audience, but I think you'd be fooling yourself. It may be one extra degree removed, but the relationship is pretty explicit. Hansel & Gretel reminds a person of Red Riding Hood, which reminds a person of Twilight. Not that far to go.

In fact, so sure was I that it would be PG-13 that when someone posted the red band trailer on Facebook and speculated that this meant the movie would be R, I did everything short of calling him a fool. Yet he was right.

The curious decision to include enough violence and/or nudity to earn the R shows that studios are no longer shying away from the R the way they once were. They clearly recognize that an R rating does not stop determined teenagers, and may in fact give them greater encouragement to see the movie in question. Which basically means that studios think theaters don't really police the selling of tickets, and they're probably right. After all, there isn't the same kind of penalty for selling movie tickets to an underage person as there is for selling cigarettes or alcohol to that same underage person. There actually may be no penalty at all. Or perhaps there's a theoretical penalty that never gets practically enforced. Can you imagine someone engaging in this kind of sting, sending a 14-year-old to buy tickets to an R movie the way they sometimes send 14-year-olds to buy cigarettes? I didn't think so.

And by placing greater "restrictions" on the audience, they're actually removing the restrictions they place on their filmmakers. My guess is that however good Hansel & Gretel ends up being, a couple of bloody witch beheadings and perhaps an errant tit or two will make it that much better.

And it's not just the latest potential Jeremy Renner franchise (seriously, doesn't this guy have better things to do than this movie?) that shows studios are noticing the box office power of R-rated films like Ted and The Hangover. In three weeks A Good Day to Die Hard will drop, also with the same R rating that the original three Die Hards carried, the same R rating that was abandoned for Live Free or Die Hard. As though to welcome the return of the R rating with open arms, Fox has been running with the tagline "Yippee Ki Yay Mother Russia," as though promising to complete John McClane's trademark phrase -- which was famously clipped before it could finish in Live Free. (Which is kind of the opposite of "living free," when you think about it.)

Hansel & Gretel is a bit different, though. We all know that R-rated action movies can succeed, but R-rated fantasy? It's been a much more untested realm. I think of movies like Excalibur, The Sword and the Sorcerer and Conan the Barbarian from my childhood, and I remember even then being confused about why I wasn't allowed to watch them. How could a movie with men carrying swords be rated R? It just didn't compute. Excalibur in particular took on a huge fascination for me, though not enough to have sought it out as an adult, I guess. In fact, I've seen none of those three.

In recent years there have been a couple other fantasy movies that have scored Rs, specifically, two movies from 2011: Immortals, probably a bloodier 300 (I didn't see it) and Your Highness, a stoner comedy that happens to be set in a fantasy world, and includes some boobs and a prosthetic monster penis. But neither of those movies seemed to expect their audiences to cross over with the Twilight audience.

You could say that even more than Ted and The Hangover, there's another recent successful entertainment commodity that gave MGM and Paramount the courage for this particular R: Game of Thrones, in which bare-chested women and gushing blood are so commonplace, they are almost gratuitous. Yet that has been one of the great critical and popular successes of the past couple years, its content not the least impediment to reaching a wide audience.

Lest you be worried that the next Pixar movie is going to be rated R, let me assure you that there are plenty of movies still content to go the "old-fashioned" route. On the very same day that A Good Day to Die Hard releases, a more traditional Valentine's Day movie also hits theaters: Beautiful Creatures, which is as naked a capitalization on Twilight as anything that's come out since Twilight first hit the scene.

Quaintly, it's rated "only" PG-13. 

R for feaR, or "If I were 13 I'd piss my pants"

The most sustained period of dread I've ever experienced in a movie theater was back in the mid-1980s, when I saw Poltergeist during what must have been a re-release. (I was young, but there was no way I was only eight, when the film had its first run in 1982.)

What I remember was of course fear, but more than that was the feeling that I couldn't escape from it -- that it surrounded me. It was not only the current fear, and the fear I'd already had, but the sense of the fear I still had waiting for me. I remember feeling a distinct sense of relief during the sequence in the middle of the night, when nothing is terrorizing the living hell out of the family and they just sit there, bonding in hushed whispers. I knew for at least five or ten minutes, I could relax.

The PG-13 rating did not yet exist when Poltergeist came out, but I really wish it had been there to save me. I was too young to see Poltergeist, even if I now consider it the top horror experience of my long and distinguished career.

Just as today, I think the R rating should have saved some 13-year-olds who weren't much dissuaded by Mama's measly PG-13.

Simply put, this is a scary fucking movie. At times, anyway.

But movies are not rated based on how likely they are to scare you. Movies get an R because of explicit sex, violence or language. (Which means that this post has already done enough to earn an R.) Mama has none of these things, but it can still scare the living shit out of a person.

A person over 17, methinks.

It makes me wonder whether the MPAA follows the letter of its own laws, but not the spirit.

If the point of a rating is to prevent children from being traumatized by things they shouldn't see, then the MPAA needs to give itself the leeway to be more flexible. I didn't think you'd ever see me advocating more stodginess on the part of the MPAA, but here I am.

The MPAA needs to have a sort-of sniff test about what should get an R. Yeah, I know they've got generic descriptors like "intense images" and "graphic images" and "adult content," but do they use them? It would seem like Mama would have been a perfect chance to do so.

You probably want to know at this point why I think Mama is so scary. Why don't I let the short film that Andy (Andres) Muschietti wrote and directed, before expanding it into a feature, speak for itself:

Were you a little chilled by that? Were you a lot chilled by that? Do you think at age 13 you'd want to watch that?

Now imagine a whole movie of that. And imagine feral children who scamper across the ground like spiders.

I suppose that Mama is not nearly the only example of a disturbing horror movie that got the lenient PG-13 rating, which provides almost no obstacle to maximum potential box office grosses, but it's the first movie I've seen that I remember causing me to wonder whether it wouldn't be just too much to handle for the average 13-year-old. And don't forget that those younger than 13 are almost certain to see it. The PG-13 rating is as much a guideline as anything, and I'm sure 10-year-olds are finding their way into this movie.

Let me pause in my prudish stance to assure you of something: I am not in the least critical of Mama itself. In fact, Mama scared me like I haven't been scared in the theater in some time. Even if the film weren't exceptionally crafted and acted, that alone would prompt me to give it a full recommendation.

I just wonder if the nearly 40-year-olds of 2040 won't be wondering whether they should have seen Mama when they did.

Then again, if they loved it as much as I (ultimately) loved Poltergeist, maybe that won't be a bad thing.

Up and running

Mama is the first movie I've seen released in 2013, which means I've just finished creating my two new Microsoft Word documents devoted to the films I see in 2013.

Always a fun moment. Glad to be back on the horse after putting 2012 to bed.

The Chastain Wing

Upon coming out of the theater where I saw Mama last night, I noticed that the only other movie playing in that wing of the theater was Zero Dark Thirty.

Making that the Jessica Chastain Wing of the theater.

And this wing shows you just how much this woman can really do. If you popped back and forth between these two theaters, you'd get the same terrific cheekbones and the same determined chin. But the Chastains you'd see would be entirely different.

In Zero Dark Thirty, you get Maya, an intensely focused CIA officer who is hellbent on finding the world's most wanted terrorist. She's headstrong and she plays with the big boys, but there's something hesitant about her, a softness at her core that leaves her not-so-secretly squeamish at what she and her government have to do to find Osama bin Laden. She's the consummate professional and she dresses the part, her fiery red hair acting as the sole sartorial hint of her rebelliousness.

In Mama, you get Annabel, a tattoed rock chick whose dark brown hair is cropped short with bangs at the front. She plays guitar in a hard rock band that might dabble in metal, though she wears Ramones t-shirts, tipping off her punk influences. She's tough and unsentimental, yet she demonstrates the same seriousness of purpose as Maya -- she won't abandon her boyfriend (boyfriend only!) when he decides to adopt his two nieces, who have spent the last five years living in a cabin in the woods.

Damn, can Chastain act.

Don't read this section if you haven't yet seen Mama

But then come back and read it once you've seen the movie. Don't forget!

It's a pretty common tactic to end a horror or thriller with the wounded survivors huddled together and finally safe, having survived their ordeal, knowing on some level that what lies ahead of them will be comparatively smooth sailing.

Not in Mama.

Oh yeah, the movie ends that way. But the future sailing hardly seems likely to be smooth.

For starters, you've got the minor detail that one of the two sisters dies. Although it's not spelled out in so many words, that's what the ending implies, and you have no good reason not to believe it. So, there's that.

But then what about the other dead bodies?

The therapist who had focused his entire career on the two feral girls has been killed, and so has their aunt, who actually fought their uncle (a brother, not an ex-husband) for their custody. How are you going to explain that to the cops, since there isn't a shred of evidence of the corporeal spirit who actually did the killings?

Add to that the fact that their uncle, who survives the ordeal, is the brother of a man who was wanted for murdering three people five years earlier, and was widely considered to have had a mental breakdown. This guy and his punk rock girlfriend are still going to be able to keep the surviving girl, even though the events that transpired (including the death of one of the girls) would have only confirmed the general suspicion that a judge was wrong to leave the kids in these people's hands in the first place?

So yeah, good luck with rest of your lives, folks.

PG: Too racy for TV

When I was a kid, I remember very clearly a friend of mine boasting to me that he had gone to see an R-rated movie in the theater with his father. We were something like 11, maybe even younger. Never wanting to be bested, I tried to one-up him by telling him I'd gone to see a PG movie without my parents. I think I knew my feat was considerably less impressive than his, but it was all I had to go on.

That was back when PG really meant parental guidance -- or so we thought at the time. There was no PG-13 rating (although there soon would be), so the Motion Picture Association of America theoretically allowed a lot more racy content into PG films than they would today.

Today, I feel like any movie rated PG is too vanilla by half. I'm not talking about animated films -- animated films are obviously a different story. You wouldn't expect many of them to get a PG-13 rating. But for live action, PG-13 seems like the minimum rating for a movie to intrigue me.

And so it was with a bit of surprise that I watched, a week ago now (it's been a busy week), Extraordinary Measures, the medical drama starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford. I noticed before the movie started that it was rated PG, "for thematic material, language and a mild suggestive moment." This sounded like the definition of vanilla to me. Considering the standard set by the "mild suggestive moment" -- a french kiss, maybe? -- I figured the language would consist of one of the characters saying "shucks" or "darn."

Nope. There were at least several "bullshit"s and I think exactly one "asshole."

Which means that Extraordinary Measures could not be shown on most television networks without being edited.

(For the record, the "suggestive moment" was Fraser and his wife, played by Keri Russell, being caught making out with most of their clothes still on.)

It got me thinking about the difference in decency standards we apply to the movies and to television. By anyone's assessment, Extraordinary Measures would be considered family-friendly entertainment. Sure, it's pretty serious in the sense that there are two children who have diseases with a 100% fatality rate. But the movie is made kind of like a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, with the music swelling at all the right spots, and a definite sheen of appropriateness for the whole family. After all, it's a product of the film division of CBS, the squarest of all major networks. (And for the record, I thought it was nicely done for what it was.)

Yet it could not air on CBS without being edited. They might slip that "asshole" in there, but those "bullshit"s would have to go.

So why would a movie that almost any parent would show to their whole family be prevented from airing on network television in its original cut, while shows like the CSIs, where blood is spattering against the wall in every other shot, are given a pass? Even on CBS, the squarest and most wholesome of broadcast networks?

It's an interesting question, and makes me think again of Kirby Dick's thought-provoking documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Dick's film is an inside look at the MPAA rating body, a highly secretive organization that he tried to penetrate with private eyes and spy techniques, with only moderate success. Dick's film is more about the line between R and NC-17, how a flash of pubic hair in a movie can give it the latter rating, whereas a hundred decapitations would rest a movie comfortably in the former. But it asks interesting questions about the lines we draw in general, and why we draw them.

So let's look at the flip side of things, a show like AMC's The Walking Dead. The show does not shy away from almost any of the violence you would see in a cinematically released zombie movie. In fact, in the last episode I saw (we're going slowly through the season, relishing it on our DVR), human characters were seen driving pick-axes into the skulls of corpses, without the camera pulling away.

If released in the theater, The Walking Dead would almost certainly receive an R rating. Of course, it would also be full of f-bombs, which would make the decision easy. That's the curious way that TV has learned to manipulate its own standards for decency. These days, you can show almost anything in the way of blood and guts, as long as you put it late enough at night. But foul language -- language you might see in a PG-13 or even PG movie -- will get you booted from TV. Yeah, the basic cable networks can get away with the word "shit" (a limited number of times) and "asshole" (probably more, but it's a word that comes up less frequently in a normal script). The f-word is still off limits. But The Walking Dead is a funny example -- it's something we never would have seen on TV even just five years ago, or if we did, it would be on HBO. It's funny to see such gore alongside such relatively genteel language, because the language is the part that trips you up, not the seemingly more disturbing gory images.

In a way, though, the language standards have gotten stricter in the movies as they've gotten looser on TV. As recently as five years ago, shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad would never have been able to get away with the word "shit" -- now they can. On the other hand, the MPAA seems to be getting more conservative if anything. One of the first times I remember considering the language vs. rating issue was in Spaceballs, which came out in 1987 -- in other words, well into the PG-13 era. Spaceballs was given a PG rating, despite an incident where a character says the word "fuck." Would "fuck" even be permissible in a PG-13 movie today?

I don't know, it's just interesting to consider.

Unrated is overrated

I've never bought into the shameless marketing of unrated versions of dumb comedies. I think the idea excited me for about a week-and-a-half back in 2001, or whenever the concept was introduced. And then I remembered I'm an adult, and the internet is full of pornography if I'm so inclined.

So I never, ever watch the unrated version. It's not only because I don't need to be titillated by two extra boob shots per movie. More than anything, it's because I hold the strong belief that there should be one definitive version of every movie out there. In trying to explain this view to those who don't already agree with it, I use the art world as a metaphor. When the Mona Lisa was done, it was done, and no one later decided that she should be holding a walkie talkie instead of a gun, or that Michelangelo's David would shoot first. So I don't like director's cuts of movies, and rarely watch them even as a curiosity. If I don't even want to give the director the chance to show me his/her true vision, it should stand to reason I don't care for the marketing department's true vision -- a vision concocted to goose DVD sales to horny teenagers.

But this blog is about scientific inquiry. So in the name of science, I decided to watch the unrated version of Miss March last night, to see what all the supposed fuss was about.

I had been sort of wanting to see Miss March since I first saw the trailers, and I have a movie called Sex Drive to blame for that. A friend and I went to see Sex Drive last fall, expecting something mindless that might have a few laughs (and, let's be honest, a few boobs). Well, it had more than a few laughs, and we were surprised by how charming it actually was. A worthy modern-day successor to a wide range of influential movies, from The Sure Thing to American Pie. Miss March -- about a high school senior who goes into a four-year coma right as he's about to lose his virginity, and discovers upon waking that his previously abstinent girlfriend has become a Playboy centerfold -- seemed to have that same kind of vibe.

It didn't take long for me to hear that Miss March was terrible, and for it to drop off my short-term radar. Then yesterday, seeing it on the shelf at Blockbuster reminded me of that flicker of interest. Certain that this was not a Mona Lisa whose purity could be tainted by an unrated version, I decided to make Miss March the subject in my experiment.

And just how hard is the marketing department pushing this unrated version? Well, let's look at the cover. Not only is there that band wrapped around the supposedly naked body of actress Raquel Alessi (who never gets naked in the film), but there's the GIANT word "UNRATED" emblazoned across, twice the size of the title, and "FULLY EXPOSED EDITION" in only slightly more modest print underneath. And there's more text -- also capitalized, but I'll spare your eyes: "Do not open near wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, boss, grandparents, babysitter, clergy, etc." (True enough, I did watch it on a night my wife was out of town, but mostly because I knew she wouldn't have any interest in sitting through it.) According to the marketing department, this is the hottest movie you are ever going to see.

I have a different theory. My theory is, the only truth in advertising about the word "UNRATED" is this: They literally did not submit it to the MPAA to be rated. Which is of course true, because the MPAA only rates the version intended for theatrical release. Any secondary version of a film can, therefore, accurately be listed as "unrated" -- in fact, you might almost say it must be listed that way. The makers of Miss March want you to believe that this was the version submitted to the MPAA, but that it would have been slapped with an NC-17, so they had to edit it down to an R if they wanted anybody to see it. There may be one or two movies out there where this is actually the case, but the majority of the time, the unrated version gets conceived after the fact -- or at the very least, footage is shot with full knowledge that it will be saved for the unrated DVD release. By this strict definition of "unrated," the unrated version could theoretically be cleaner than the theatrical version. The only way you would know would be to compare the two.

And the makers of Miss March are banking on the fact that you won't. They believe most consumers lured in by the DVD's promises will watch the unrated version only. Perhaps it's even more self-deprecating than that. Perhaps they realized that the movie is crap, so regardless of which version you watch, it'll be the only one.

Well, not me. I wanted to see exactly which parts they considered too hot to include in the R version -- if any at all. I wanted to hold them accountable to their warnings of "full exposure."

But I didn't want to watch the damn thing twice. Even the pursuit of science has demands that are just too unreasonable.

So I decided I would watch the unrated version, identify scenes I thought might be too hot/vulgar for the theatrical version, then watch the theatrical version on fast forward, slowing down only during the passages under examination. Having just seen the movie, I hoped I'd be able to note any major differences even at five times the speed.

Here's what I came up with, using my notes as title headings (Some spoilers to follow, if you really care):

1) Crackheads. Near the beginning of the movie, the future centerfold (Raquel Alessi) and her pre-comatose boyfriend (Zach Cregger, who also co-directed and co-wrote) are giving a "scared straight" speech to an auditorium full of elementary school kids. Their warped idea of how to promote abstinence involves telling the kids that because so-and-so smoked cigarettes, her baby "came out a crackhead." Except Alessi's mouth is not saying the word "crackhead." That was dubbed in later. I doubted they would go to the trouble of dubbing in crude dialogue just to make the movie more racy, especially since "crackhead" is not the kind of word that gets ratings boards in a tizzy. It wouldn't be worth it to undermine yourself technically -- it's easy to see the lips don't match up, and I was only half watching. But I saw no other explanation for it.

Verdict: The word is dubbed in the theatrical version as well. In fact, all three times she references the crack baby, it's dubbed. I'm no lip reader, but I'm now pretty sure the actual line of dialogue was "her baby came out retarded." An 11th hour save on being politically correct, but do Cregger and his co-writer/co-director/co-star Trevor Moore lose points for filming it the "wrong way" in the first place?

2) Spooge on limo. The limo picking up the two abstinence-lovers for the prom already has three occupants: A budding rapper (played by The Office's Craig Robinson) named Horsedick.mpeg (a sort of funny joke that gets run into the ground), and his two "bitches." As the abstinent couple gets their picture taken by her parents outside the house, one of the "bitches" springs out through the sun roof and spits up what appears to be a mouthful of semen. "Horsedick, you nasty," she says.

Verdict: Also in the theatrical version. Semen hasn't been off limits since There's Something About Mary, though expectorating it on a car roof might have been pushing the envelope. Still, the semen and the accompanying fellatio implications were deemed acceptable for an R.

3) Hospital shit. When Eugene (let's give this guy a name) awakens from his coma -- courtesy of a baseball bat to the head by his brilliant friend Tucker (Moore) -- he falls out of the hospital bed in his confusion. Moments later, while exerting to stand up but not yet having control of his bowels, he releases what can only be described as a "shit bomb" from underneath his hospital gown. The effect is quite good -- the shit looks like a believable mixture of chunks and liquid, and cascades outward in a way resembling a tossed bucket of dirty water. And though gross-out gags are a bit played out, the ick factor really worked for me on this one.

Verdict: You guessed it -- also in the theatrical version. I wasn't surprised that this was okay for an R. In fact, I was hopeful that it wasn't exclusive to the unrated version -- if it had been, it would have been a good visual gag that I would have missed if I'd stuck to my usual viewing philosophy.

4) Straw dick. Given the way sexual braggarts always get their comeuppance in movies like this, we shouldn't be surprised that the suggestively named Horsedick.meg turns out not to have a dick at all. In the big finale outside the Playboy Mansion, he's outed as a guy born without genitalia, who has to "piss through a straw." Several members of his shocked posse then grab him and pull his pants down, at which point we see what looks like balls with two thin straws protruding, about the thickness of the kind you use to stir your coffee. To make matters more gross, some actual urine spurts out the end. (And how's this for a continuity error -- there's no way that girl could have spit out Horsedick's semen in the limo if he didn't have a penis.)

Verdict: Last but not least, this was also in the theatrical version. If a movie like Miss March doesn't have jokes like this, what does it have?

So all four potentially sketchy scenes I identified were in both versions of the film. For a moment I was delighted by the outrageous possibility that the unrated version and the theatrical version might be exactly the same. What better validation of my skepticism could there be?

Yet when I compared the running times, the unrated version was a full three-and-a-half minutes longer: 93:26 compared to 89:53. Just where were those extra 213 seconds?

I couldn't find them all, but I did account for the difference in some ways:

1) Grotto. Having made it to his personal Shangri-La, Tucker stumbles across the grotto at the Playboy Mansion. In the theatrical version, it's basically just a wide shot where you see a nude woman diving into the water from far away. In the unrated version, the difference is exactly those two boob shots that I mentioned at the start -- just two quick cutaways of topless women. Yawn.

2) Lesbian scene. The least surprising thing in Miss March is that a hitchhiking Eugene and Tucker get picked up by a pair of attractive European lesbians who can't stop pawing each other. In fact, they ask the two guys to drive so they can go at it in the backseat. This scene is pretty chaste in both versions, in terms of actual nudity -- there's a nipple quickly flashed here and there -- but in the unrated version, there's the introduction of a bottle into their love-making. I didn't really consider this very risque -- all she does is hold up a bottle and then lower it out of view -- so I didn't write it down the first time. But on fast forward I thought it might have been missing from the theatrical version. Then again, maybe not. I couldn't be bothered to slow down enough to examine it closely.

3) A different ending. And here is where my big fear of alternate versions really comes into play. See, I liked the ending they chose for the unrated version better. In the unrated version, after reuniting with his lost love, Eugene unwittingly gets drunk again, with Tucker as his personal bartender, right before going to finally consummate his relationship. It was this drunkenness after the prom that caused him to fall down the stairs and land in a four-year coma, so history looks like it will repeat itself. In the unrated version, we then see him upstairs in a bedroom with Cindi (let's give her a name), pounding away at high speed as only a drunk rookie might do. It's a little crass but it is otherwise pretty chaste -- the sheets cover them up. As he is approaching climax, Cindi warns him not to over-exert himself, but it's too late -- we hear a juicy release of feces, and the credits roll. That's gross as hell, but it works -- gives literal meaning to the colorful metaphor "he shat the bed." Besides, it brings back a recurring joke -- it's Eugene's fourth involuntary shit of the movie -- and that's always a smart move in the closing scene of a comedy.

In the theatrical version, however, they shied away from the bed-shitting joke. Could that really have been too gross for the MPAA? You don't see the shit, you only hear it. So instead, the movie ends with Tucker and Eugene each slamming down a shot glass on the kitchen counter. In other words, it doesn't even end with a joke. No wonder no one liked this movie.

In the final analysis, I didn't like it much either -- regardless of the version. But it's not the worst piece of shit I've ever seen, either.

I can say that Hugh Hefner, who makes an extended cameo here, chose a better product tie-in movie with last year's The House Bunny. Not only was that movie both funnier and sweeter, but it has only one version, which happens to be rated PG-13 -- meaning it can be plenty winning without torrents of feces and semen.

Guidance always suggested

My wife and I were talking about movies last night, as we often do, and it came up that PG seemed like an endangered rating. It seemed to us that very few movies would fall into that categorization these days. Any animated feature or other movie geared toward kids would obviously get a G rating, and anything with even a flicker of violence, sexual material or bad language would jump straight to PG-13.

It struck me that this would be an interesting idea for a post. After all, PG is one of the bedrock ratings. It's existed since 1972, when it replaced its mirror image (GP), which itself replaced the rating known as M (for "mature") just two years earlier. That last one makes me laugh, since "mature" and "parental guidance suggested" would hardly be synonyms today -- just look at the system for rating video games.

So I searched today to see if I could find how many 2009 releases had been rated PG. After striking out on a handful of search strings, I finally got on the right track. And was a little surprised by what I found.

This handy website showed 2009 box office totals grouped by their MPAA rating. PG showed the top 20 results and then stopped, as did PG-13 and R.

G?

Four movies.

See, it's not PG that's nearly extinct after all. It's G.

That's right, among all 2009 theatrical releases, only Hannah Montana: The Movie, Earth, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience and Under the Sea 3D were rated G by the Motion Picture Association of America. Two of those are teenybopper concert movies, and the other two are nature documentaries.

Wow.

If you're doing math, that means that not a single animated movie that's been released this year has been rated G.

Among those films that earned a surprise PG rating: Up, Monsters vs. Aliens, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, G-Force and Hotel for Dogs.

The thing that's extra weird is that none of the G-rated movies are actually movies intended for children. Two are aimed at teenyboppers, and two are for people who loved the documentary TV series Planet Earth, originally made for the BBC but aired here on Discovery.

So is there any movie parents can take their kids to without first heeding the MPAA's recommendation of "guidance"? Is there any movie that parents can just judge by its poster, without worrying that their child's mind is going to be poisoned in some undefinable way?

At first glance, the answer would seem to be "no." The days when feature-length Winnie the Pooh movies got theatrical releases are long gone. Every kids movie has a bit of an edge to it today, perhaps to keep step with a generation exposed to more mature language and themes at a younger age.

At first I wondered why a movie like Up would be PG, but then I remembered (spoilers ahead!!!) that the villain actually falls to his death at the end of the movie. (Well, I suppose he could have survived falling from a dirigible a mile off the ground, but it seems unlikely). That may be a step into more mature territory for Pixar, but it's an old-school trick in Disney movies. Villains were always dying at the end of Disney movies, on up through Gaston in Beauty and the Beast and Mr. Clayton the gorilla hunter in Tarzan. Yet you didn't see those movies slapped with a PG.

I'm guessing the PG ratings for Ice Age, G-Force and Hotel for Dogs are for excessive fart humor. For G-Force, the dang letter rating is right there in the title, yet it can't even score one. (Then again, I guess I wouldn't expect a movie called G-String to get a G rating either).

You could argue that the PG rating is "sexier" to a child than the G rating -- it makes him or her feel grown-up, which is what every child above age three wants. But that argument would only hold water if the studios and their marketing departments were the ones determining the ratings.

No, it's the MPAA, the subject of Kirby Dick's wicked 2006 documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated, which I suggest you watch for a good laugh. Not only does that film provide ample proof that this body is far more concerned with nudity than violence, but it also suggests that the highly anonymous membership is composed largely of moral majority types whom you crossed at your peril.

So is the MPAA getting even more squeamish about fart jokes and animals bonking each other on the head? Or are those fart jokes and head bonks just much more brusque than they used to be, to keep pace with faster times?

In the end I don't think it matters. Because the practical upshot is that most studios probably don't even desire a G rating anymore. They do control the rating in the sense that they can add just enough raunch to trigger the MPAA's heightened sensitivity to such things. If they want the more marketing-friendly PG, they can get it.

And who wouldn't want it? It's abundantly clear that the PG rating is not in the least affecting the box office for children's movies. Three of the top five highest-grossing PG movies this year are animated films, alongside more traditional PG fare such as Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithosonian and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. In fact, our certainty that the latest Harry Potter had finally graduated to PG-13 was what prompted our discussion in the first place.

Sure, maybe there are some religious wackos who are actually observing a distinction between G and PG in their willingness to let their children see movies. But they are an extremely small segment of the moviegoing public. Besides, they have no leg to stand on, as it was some of those same people who took their children to the R-rated The Passion of the Christ. They thought seeing Jim Caviezel beaten within an inch of his life would help their children understand why/how Christ died for our sins -- long sinewy ropes of blood be damned.

If anything, a PG rating actually encourages a parent that the movie might be slightly more tolerable for them to sit through. There's a special kind of boredom associated with a movie that is not only directed at children, but also neutered into a lame vanilla stew of inoffensiveness.

So what's the future of general admission? Will G be like X before it? Will both extremes disappear from the cinematic landscape as we all search for a middle ground?

Time will tell. In the meantime, I'm going to go watch some digital guinea pigs.

Quantifying menace

In case you were wondering, my subject is the title for a script I'm writing, a time-twisting intergalactic thriller in which James Bond teams up with Jar Jar Binks to fight an evil coalition comprised of Goldfinger, Darth Maul and a bunch of corrupt imperial senators.

Okay, no.

Actually, it was inspired by re-watching The Dark Knight earlier today. I came away with the DVD from a holiday gift swap -- much better than the fake vomit or package of blue condoms you often get stuck with at these things. We finally got around to our second viewing today, and I have to say, I liked it better the second time around. I liked it plenty well the first time, just not as much as the average person. Something about it made me appreciate it more the second time.

But that's not what I'm here to write about today. Actually, I want to write about the funny explanation given by the MPAA for its PG-13 rating, which I happened to notice after the FBI warning screen.

Namely, it was rated PG-13 for "intense sequences of violence and some menace."

Some?

That seems like a funny way to measure the amount of menace in The Dark Knight, which I consider to be among the most menacing mainstream films ever made -- even including R-rated movies. That doesn't mean it's the most violent or psychologically scarring, but this movie has menace coming out its ears. You could say that Heath Ledger's Joker is the very personification of menace. Doesn't it seem like this would be more honest? "Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and a shitload of menace." Then that would have to be followed by "This rating justification is rated PG-13 for some profanity."

It made me think of something really funny the website I write for compiled a couple years back. And since this is Memorial Day, no day for me to come up with an original idea, I am going to possibly illegally reproduce the following list for your reading enjoyment. Hey, at least I'm not trying to pass it off as my own. However, maintaining my own blog anonymity (for whatever value that has) precludes me from crediting the actual authors. Or should I say, compilers.

While I contemplate the hot water I could theoretically be getting myself into, I hope you will enjoy the following:

The 10 Funniest Ratings Explanations by the Motion Picture Association of America:

10. Mother’s Boys (1994)
“Rated R for language and for a mother’s sociopathic behavior”

9. Indian in the Cupboard (1995)
“PG for mild language and brief video images of violence and sexy dancing”

8. All I Wanna Do (1998)
“PG-13 for teen sex-related material, language, and substance misuse”

7. The Hunted (1997)
“R for strong bloody ninja violence and a humorous drug related scene”

6. War of the Buttons (1994)
“PG for mischievous conflict, some mild language, and bare bottoms”

5. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
“PG-13 for violence, language, horror images, slime, and gore”

4. Skateboard Kid II (1995)
“PG for brief mild language and an adolescent punch in the nose”

3. Bushwhacked (1997)
“PG for language and a mild birds and bees discussion”

2. Twister (1996)
“PG-13 for intense depiction of very bad weather”

1. Jefferson in Paris (1995)
“PG-13 for mature theme, some images of violence, and a bawdy puppet show"

Thanks, guys. I'd credit you if I weren't strangely committed to masking my identity. Not unlike a certain caped crusader I know.