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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: The new movie "Paint Drying"
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-28-2016 04:29 AM
I was just thinking about the same thing. :grin:
It would create a rather ironic situation when it became known that the authorities who are supposed to watch each and every movie, start to finish, in order to protect the public from indecent material were caught sleeping on the job.
Personally, I find the idea of censorship to be a silly idea in this day and age. There is nothing that can truly be kept out of the public view in the internet age, even in countries that supposedly censor and block things that the government doesn't want them to see. There is always a way to get around the censorship blocks.
In countries where the internet is not censored, it is easy to find the most shocking and disgusting movies and images, literally at the click of a mouse.
I do believe that there should be a certain sense of decorum on the public airwaves and I think it's okay for the government to set standards which the public should obey but I do not think that it is the government's job to "protect" the public.
By now, any reasonably intelligent person knows or should know that "unsavory" content exists and can be found virtually anywhere. Such reasonable persons should know where to look if they want to see such things and they should know where NOT to look if they DON'T want to see them.
When it comes to movie theaters, the idea that any kind of movie should or should not be shown is ludicrous. Even in the "Old Days" virtually every town had a so-called, "Pink Pussycat" theater where almost anybody could simply walk in and see whatever kind of pornographic movie was available. It is downright silly to think that movie theaters are some kind of venerated place where only "decent" movies are shown.
If a theater starts to show too many "indecent" movies, the general public will quickly learn of it and, if that kind of content is frowned upon in a given place, that theater will likely go out of business in short order.
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of submitting a movie like "Paint Drying" to the Film Board because it highlights the silliness and stupidity of the idea of censoring films for "the public good."
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 01-28-2016 10:29 AM
quote: Mike Blakesley
I get the whole "quirky protest" thing, but does anybody think a board such as this is unnecessary? Is there any chance of it being abolished, or any other changes made, due to protests like this?
I'm probably going to be flamed for this, but IMHO the British movie "classification" system works reasonably well, most of the time. Confession: I was actually once interviewed for a BBFC examiner's job, and the reason I didn't get it was because they were more interested in hiring people with expertise on child development than movies. It was made very clear to me that their main purpose was to determine what was OK for, say, a 12-year old to see unattended and what wasn't, not determining what mature adults can and can't see.
The time they sometimes have to do that is when their policy kicks in which says that if the act of showing a movie could itself constitute a criminal offense, they cannot give it a certificate, because they themselves could then be potentially liable. Believe it or not, most of the occasions on which this actually happens is if an obscure but still existing law, the Animals in Films Act is believed to apply. The BBFC feels that if there is any possibility whatsoever that actual cruelty to animals is shown in an entertainment film, they can't pass it.
In any case, there is a safeguard, which is that for films shown in theaters, the BBFC does not have ultimate legal authority. Formally, all they can do is to advise the city councils that actually issue the license which allows a public cinema to operate. There have been cases when councils have allowed the showing of films that the BBFC has refused to pass, and vice-versa.
The BBFC does, however, have legal authority for DVDs and BDs: sell one that they have rated 15 to a 12-year old (for example), and you are criminally liable. Some anti-BBFC campaigners believe that this is a civil liberties issue. But it's been a very long time since there has been a notable case. In fact, the last one I can remember is Reservoir Dogs in the 1990s, when the BBFC refused to give it a video certificate for around three years because of the "video nasty" hysteria that was in full swing at the time. As a result of that, the film played continuously in British theaters for a long time. My local one at the time played it every Friday at midnight for around 3-4 years. Out of morbid curiosity, I went to see it on the last Friday night show, the week after the video release, and the print, as you'd expect, was scratched and beaten up to the point at which it was barely showable. Very fitting, given all the old and gnarly prints in Tarantino's own collection, not to mention the subject matter of this movie!
I don't know what the BBFC's legal powers, if any, are in relation to online video on demand. I suspect that the big players (e.g. Netflix and Amazon) are observing their classifications voluntarily, even if they aren't legally required to. As Churchill once remarked, voluntary good behvavior is far more effective than enforced good behavior, and I'm guessing that the big VOD players would like to keep the law out of their business as much as possible, and will therefore be trying to avoid making waves.
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Michael Putlack
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 187
From: Fort Collins, Colorado
Registered: Sep 2011
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posted 01-28-2016 08:20 PM
quote: Mike Blakesley
In some ways it would be nicer if it was a "law" for kids not to go to R-rated movies, because it would prevent a lot of arguments with parents over things like "is it really THAT BAD?" and kids begging for the folks to drop them off, etc.
Mike, trust me, it doesn't make it any easier. Here at my cinema in New Zealand, we're playing both the Hateful Eight (restricted under 18) and The Revenant (restricted under 16) and parents don't care that it's the law and we have a large poster from the government with the word "ILLEGAL" in large bold letters in the explanations, but they still want to argue and yell about it. Oftentimes I'm able to say "hey man, I totally agree with you, but it isn't up to us." Even then though, you still have those can't storm out saying "well you're not getting my money" even though we couldn't take their money if we wanted to!
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 02-01-2016 11:15 PM
quote: Scott Norwood
If I understood the Kickstarter page correctly, the issue is that (Leo--correct me if I am wrong about this) a BBFC certificate is required for any film to be exhibited in a British cinema and that the process of doing so is often cost prohibitive to smaller productions.
The "is required" bit is a gray area. The BBFC is a private company, whose ratings for theatrical releases carry no legal force.
In order to charge members of the public to walk into your premises to see a movie, you have to have a cinema license issued by your local council. This license has a long list of conditions (most of which are about safety, fire exits and that sort of stuff), one of which is that you will observe BBFC rulings unless the council decides, on a case-by-case basis, to let you screen a movie that the BBFC has not passed (or with a lower age rating), or to not let you screen a movie that it has (or with a higher age rating).
Officially, the BBFC claims that its role is purely to "advise" the local authorities that issue the licenses, and that no-one is compelled to pay them to have their movie "classified". In reality, however, if you try to bypass the BBFC, you will be faced with dealing with hundreds of local councils individually, assuming you want to release your film nationwide, many of whom will refuse to look at it unless the BBFC has first.
For consumer video publication, however, the BBFC does have legal teeth: under the Video Recordings Act 1984 it is the "designated authority" for classifying (rating) releases. If I were to open a cinema and play a double bill of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom at a Sunday kids matinee, the worst that could happen would be that the council would revoke my cinema license, and I'd go out of business. However, if I sold DVDs of them to a 10-year old, I could be sent to jail.
For essentially this reason (the Video Act), I don't think that the BBFC's claim that they are an advisory service, the use of which is entirely voluntary by filmmakers and distributors, cuts a lot of ice. It is effectively impossible to release a movie in the UK, either theatrically or on retail video, without paying them to rate it, and for lower budget productions, that cost is probably a significant obstacle.
As a free speech safeguard, the theatrical release system sort of works, but in all the high profile cases in which the BBFC's decision has been overruled at a local level, that decision was made in the first place, meaning that they still had to be paid, and that criticism of the BBFC on the grounds of cost is, IMHO, justified.
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