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Topic: Fairly lame "60 Minutes" piece on movie piracy last night

Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-04-2009 03:15 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
The MPAA is too cowardly to draw the physical distinction that separates pornography from movies with simulated sex and violence. Doing so would give too much of an advantage to independent film producers who are more likely to come up with daring, different material. Big Hollywood studios only know how to play it safe. So they need to have some way of keeping the indy crowd under their thumbs.

I've read this paragraph ten times now, and I still can't see the point you're trying to make. Many independent studios aren't even MPAA signatories, and as such don't even bother with submitting their films for rating. How are they being kept under the MPAA's thumb when they don't even participate in the system?

This last weekend I saw the new Lars Von Trier film, Anitchrist. It has some of the most graphic and intense sex scenes I've ever seen on film, outside of deliberate porn, and also includes (and you really don't want to look at this)

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle
a scene where the guy's wife smashes his dick into a pulp with a log, and another where she takes a pair of scissors and graphically cuts out what Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction calls "her holiest of holies". All of this on camera.

Here's the thing: it's unrated. And it's doing a land office business. How are the people behind this film under the thumb of the MPAA?

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Karl Borowski
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 161
From: Sulking in GameFAQ Forum
Registered: Sep 2009

posted 11-04-2009 03:35 PM

Chris: I disagree with you that 60 Minutes wasn't dumbed down in the past. I think it was. I don't mean that in the condescending way that it probably comes across in type. That's the way MOST media is.

Digging up good dirt instead of writing fluff and dumbing something down so just about every Joe Q. Public can understand it are two different things.

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Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

posted 11-04-2009 04:17 PM

Um... perhaps you should read the post more closely, because nowhere did I claim that it wasn't dumbed down.

Since you don't get it, I was repeating the conversation and trying to understand where you got the notion that Frank's statement "purported you to have said something different from what you meant." I still don't understand.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 11-04-2009 04:21 PM

quote: Mark Ogden
I've read this paragraph ten times now, and I still can't see the point you're trying to make.

Let's see if this is simple enough:

In one movie a couple of people are acting like they're having sex.

In another movie the two people are not acting. They really are having sex and the camera shows all the explicit in-out details to prove they really are having sex.

Understand now?

It doesn't really matter how "graphic" a scene of simulated sex or violence may be. It's still fake. Just like pro wrestling. The X-rating is meant for stuff that's really happening. The NC-17 is for shocking stuff that's still being faked.

quote:
Many independent distributors aren't even MPAA signatories, and as such don't even bother with submitting their films for rating. How are they being kept under the MPAA's thumb when they don't even participate in the system?

Because a lot of movie theater chains refuse to book NC-17 rated movies or "unrated" movies with adults-only oriented content. Many TV stations and newspapers will not run any ads for movies rated NC-17. A NC-17 rating is a commercial death sentence for most movies.

The NC-17 rating failed miserably in living up to its purpose: being an alternative rating for non-porn adults-only movies while letting the porn industry have the X. The MPAA refused to draw a line between porn and other types of adults-only movies. That refusal has made the NC-17 rating irrelevant and carry the much of the same stigma as the X rating. Many movie theaters, newspapers and TV stations aren't going to take any chances while the line of separation remains stupidly blurry.

quote: Mark Ogden
Here's the thing: it's unrated. And it's doing a land office business.

Antichrist has made $158,000 in very limited release. That's hardly "land office" business. The movie sure won't get any sort of mainstream bookings in theater chains like Carmike Cinemas. However, I am certain the movie will find its way onto home video in its uncut form and maybe even play on cable networks like HBO or IFC uncut as well if there is enough demand for it.

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Chris Slycord
Film God

Posts: 2986
From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea
Registered: Mar 2007

posted 11-04-2009 04:38 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
It doesn't really matter how "graphic" a scene of simulated sex or violence may be. It's still fake. Just like pro wrestling. The X-rating is meant for stuff that's really happening. The NC-17 is for shocking stuff that's still being faked.

Maybe you were trying to say how you'd like things to be, but fyi there's no such rating as "X" anymore.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-04-2009 05:05 PM

The 1979 version of this story is much more interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZtfEDyTXiU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc8_dlrLUkY

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Karl Borowski
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 161
From: Sulking in GameFAQ Forum
Registered: Sep 2009

posted 11-04-2009 05:09 PM

Speaking of old-school piracy, I've heard stories of guys renting out 16mm prints, making dupes of them, then sending the dupes back! [Big Grin]

Now *that* takes gall.

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Cameron Glendinning
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 845
From: West Ryde, Sydney, NSW Australia
Registered: Dec 2005

posted 11-04-2009 05:15 PM

I personally think dumbing down and propaganda are two totally different evils. Above is propaganda and Phil nailed it with

quote:
I also found it super-interesting that CBS and Paramount are both subs/owned by the same whore "MOTHER" company!

Most news in either print or tv, aims for infotainment and simply reinforce your existing beliefs and values, never to teach or preach.

Often it is made to appear balanced between the (only) two popular points of view expressed by party politics. Dispite that on most issues there are really thousands of different points of view and rarely is anyting as simple as black or white but really more the shades of gray.

Now with the evils of the editor? Or is that the legal department's interference? Most of the more interesting facts seem to be removed from serious reporting due to the fear of being sued rather than being dumbed down for 12 year olds.

Thats my 2 cents worth, its based from my past experience working in the camera department of a tv station.

Noam Chomsky has an interesting documentry on the topic called "Manufacturing Consent" which I remember running in cinemas years ago.

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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-04-2009 05:42 PM

quote: Bobby Henderson
The X-rating is meant for stuff that's really happening. The NC-17 is for shocking stuff that's still being faked.

No. The NC-17 tag WOULD ALSO be for the stuff that's really happening, if the producers of those films cared to submit them to the board, because as Chris pointed out, there is no official "X" tag anymore.

quote: Bobby Henderson
Many TV stations and newspapers will not run any ads for movies rated NC-17. A NC-17 rating is a commercial death sentence for most movies.

Yeah. Pretty much my point. That's why IFC and other distributors ignore the MPAA's "thumb" completely. Why bother with them at all? Do you honestly believe they had any illusions about landing a picture like Antichrist at a Regal or a Carmike? As you correctly pointed out, they won't get any mainstream bookings. They will, however, get the Landmarks, the Laemmles, the Angelicas, the independents, the college circuits, and they will get to run ads in the New York and Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, the Boston Phoenix, The Chicago Reader, LA Weekly (is that still going?) et. al., in addition to on-line coverage (TV stations and newspapers? How very passe). In short, they will reach and show the film to exactly the audience they want. And they will do so with no say from the MPAA or its' "thumb" whatsoever. So how was it they are being controlled by them?

quote:
Speaking of old-school piracy, I've heard stories of guys renting out 16mm prints, making dupes of them, then sending the dupes back! [Big Grin]

I used to work with a guy who took 35mm porn films out of the booth of the only triple-X theatre in town and took them somewhere overnight and made 16mm reduction prints from them. They looked like crap, but in the days before VHS, he did a good business.

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Anslem Rayburn
Master Film Handler

Posts: 476
From: Yuma, AZ, USA
Registered: May 2002

posted 11-04-2009 06:28 PM

quote: Mark Ogden
Yeah. Pretty much my point. That's why IFC and other distributors ignore the MPAA's "thumb" completely. Why bother with them at all? Do you honestly believe they had any illusions about landing a picture like Antichrist at a Regal or a Carmike? As you correctly pointed out, they won't get any mainstream bookings.

By ignoring it, they are victims of it. They can't get wider exposure because they can't screen the film many places because they didn't submit it for rating (knowing that submitting it would brand it NC-17 and destroy ANY marketing opportunity). They may not have dreamed of Regal or Carmike, but there are plenty of independents who won't (or can't) take the chance on an unrated film, either. So, the filmmaker takes the lesser of two evils. If the ratings were applied more evenly, films like this would play more screens in more cities.

Simply put, ignoring the ratings system doesn't make it disappear, the indies are still suffering because of it.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-04-2009 06:31 PM

They could have gotten around all the NC-17 vs. X nonsense if they had just created an "S" rating for sexual content, with an additional "ES" rating for explicit sex. Violence has to be obscenely over-the-top to get an NC-17 on its own; most very violent movies are still rated R.

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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-04-2009 06:41 PM

Anslem, the point is, they don't care, they willfully ignore it, and this removes their victim-hood. They could have submitted a less graphic cut of the picture for a rating, either that or washed their hands of it entirely. Many adult oriented films play without ratings, from producers who accept the situation but don't want to have to water down their film to satisfy the board. They know full well what the marketing potential of these films are going in, and they accept it. Hard to be a victim when you understood what you were getting into going in.

A good example of this is John Cameron Mitchell's wonderful Shortbus, from 2006. Great film, but very sexually explicit, and no faking either. Both he and THINKFilm, the distributor behind it understood what the intentions were and what was going to be shown, and the limited bookings they would get. They went for it anyway, and made a fine movie, albeit one with an "all actors were over 18" board at the head.

Not everyone is willing to compromise and/or suck up to the MPAA to get a 3000 print release, thank God.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 11-04-2009 08:47 PM

The NC-17 rating serves absolutely NO PURPOSE. The MPAA might as well have kept the X-rating and done nothing else. Cowards. Everyone understands what "X rating" means. NC-17 sounds needlessly complicated and yet serves no conceivable difference from the X-rating. There is no purpose for it other than what we thought it would be when introduced back in 1990.

BTW, I think anyone who can't tell the difference between a porn movie and a regular movie with realistic, yet simulated sex scenes is pretty damned stupid.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-04-2009 09:22 PM

The difference between "X" and "NC-17" is that X was never trademarked by the MPAA. Anyone can self-apply the X rating to his own film, regardless of content, without paying to have it rated by the MPAA.

By contrast, NC-17 cannot be self-applied, and can only be used when a film is rated by the MPAA with that designation.

Presumably, the idea was that producers of porn films would not pay to have them rated, and, thus, NC-17 would imply that the film is a legitimate non-pornographic release with adult content. Unfortunately, this was thwarted because the newspapers which had previously refused to carry advertisements for X-rated films extended the policy to NC-17, with the result that few mainstream exhibitors would book these films.

Not that this has anything to do with movie piracy.

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Christian Appelt
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 505
From: Frankfurt, Germany
Registered: Dec 2001

posted 11-06-2009 10:17 AM

quote: Aaron Garman

MPAA = Motion Picture Asswhipes of America.

Are you sure?
In his 1963 film "Irma la Douce" Billy Wilder had the pimp's union of Paris named MPPA (for Mec's Paris Protective Association) [Smile]

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