MPAA Embraces NC-17

Forget the Academy—the Hollywood organization that really concerns filmmakers is the MPAA.

However, on Monday the Motion Picture Association of America took the first steps in demystifying its closed-door ratings process, meeting with a group of independent filmmakers and urging the community to embrace the full gamut of lettered ratings—in particular, the highly stigmatized box-office-killing NC-17.

MPAA chairman Dan Glickman met with both directors and studio execs at the Sundance Film Festival to make the ratings process more user-friendly to indie filmmakers, whose edgy  fare can suffer commercially when slapped with an NC-17 or, to save itself from the dreaded demarcation, goes into release without a rating.

Glickman said that films given an NC-17 rating, for either sexual or violent content, have come to be equated with the X rating of yore, meaning that not only are moviegoers reluctant to buy tickets, but distributors are as wary in picking up the films as movie theaters are in playing them, creating an unfair stigma on the decidedly non-smutty films.

"It's one of our ratings, and I'd like to see it used more," Glickman told Variety. "We are going to talk about this with the Directors Guild of America and the National Association of Theater Owners."

Joan Graves, the chairman of the Classification and Ratings Administration, the group that actually doles out the letters, added that if NC-17 begins to get more liberal use, it could bolster gruesome horror franchises, notably Saw and Hostel, who would be able to up the ick factor commensurate with their ratings.

In the meantime, Glickman said that a new rating, denoting content falling somewhere between R and NC-17, may be added to CARA's arsenal.

Glickman & Co. also announced Monday that they were taking new steps to ensure the ratings process was an open one and that filmmakers were privy to from the start of their production, rather than something slapped on a film at the last minute—which frequently causes directors to head back to the editing room to achieve a more audience-friendly rating.

Last year, for example, several scenes in Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction were cut to downgrade from an NC-17 to an R rating—for all the good it did. Pedro Almodóvar refused to trim a sex scene between two men in 2004's Bad Education, and Atom Egoyan opted not to make changes to a ménage à trois among Rachel Blanchard, Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth in 2005's Where the Truth Lies, leaving both films saddled with NC-17s and relatively little exposure in theaters.

To make the process more transparent, the MPAA will, for the first time ever, make public the names of its senior raters. The association has also appointed a liaison specifically for the indie community, who will communicate with filmmakers throughout their productions and serve as the go-to person for questions on ratings.

Glickman, however, was quick to note that films would still not be given an official rating until the final edit was submitted and reviewed, but that this way there should be far fewer rating surprises.

But just in case there are some, the organization has also amended its appeals process, allowing filmmakers to cite precedents in what's been deemed acceptable fare from films other than their own.

News of the revamped ratings plan comes in the wake of last year's anti-MPAA documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. The feature, which coincidentally made its debut at the 2006 Sundance fest, argued that the ratings system was secretive and lacked accountability and outed several of the board's previously anonymous members, some of whom didn't have children or were affiliated with religious groups.

The documentary clearly had an impact on Glickman, who, in speaking with Variety last week, credited the film with making clear that "we probably haven't done as much as we can to explain how it all works."