As usual, Landmark Theatres doesn't fight this act of corporate censorship.

The kicker is that Sex & Lucia won an award in a film festival where one of the offending newspapers was a corporate sponsor.

------------------
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" - Homer Simpson
 

It doesn't matter WHY it's unrated or NC-17. They are just a "mark of death" to most movies like that.
 

So if GWTW remained unrated as it was in 1939, nobody under 17 would be allowed to see it at some of those theaters. However, since they slapped a G on it, a 6-year old can walk up and get a ticket by themselves. Go figure.

=TMP=
 

When WB re-released the "uncut" version of The Wild Bunch, the ratings board initially hit it with an NC-17. Strangely, the scenes that had been cut in the first place had no additional violence than the original R cut, which shows that standards of violence have been toughened up since the 60's. WB's saving grace was finding the documentation that proved the R had been given to The Wild Bunch before the general release version cuts had been made, so the MPAA rules allowed this version to retain the R rating.

The ad ban on Sex & Lucia smells of a double standard.
 

Strangely, the Times' former competitor, the P-I, used to run ads for X-rated theaters; until the two papers advertising departments merged in a Joint Operating Agreement. Back in 1981 my junior high social studies class used the P-I in an assignment, and one of the tasks was to find a G or X-rated movie advertisement and add it to our clippings for the assignemnt. According to the Times' spokesperson, I should have been warped for life for that.

Then again it's good to see a "Film Snob" admire The Fast and the Furious.

If a film maker or studio does not like the rating they got, they can
appeal the rating. In Los Angeles the appeal screening is done at a
screening room other than the MPAA screening room in Sherman Oaks, Ca.. They run the film and afterwords talk for about 1-2 hours about
the cuts that were done to the film. Most of the time the director
or studio rep. is waiting in the lobby of the screening room. The directors would try to come into the booth to see what was happening
in the other auditorium. When I was in Los Angeles, I worked at a screening room in Beverly Hills that did all the MPAA appeals screenings. So I saw a few MPAA ratings appeals, every few months.

Perhaps it is because the paper will not allow print ads for anything containing the word 'SEX'?

Y Tu Mama Tambien (and your mother too) and L.I.E., while both containing very graphic sexual material, do not have the magic word 'SEX' in their titles.

-Aaron

 

In the sales contract for the land, there is a "covenant" in the deed that will prevent us from ever showing any movie rated harder than "R". The land we bought was city owned... and the Mayor and Town Council would only agree to the terms of the sale if that "covenant" was included.

As far as banning the ad in the local paper.... In the main Nashville newspaper, the ads for the local "Strip Joints" and "Gentlemen's Clubs" have graphics and things that no one would dare place on a movie poster... and they run those ads 7 days a week.
 

quote:

---

that will prevent us from ever showing any movie rated harder than "R".

---

Pun intended?

As for Sex and Lucia being unrated, I'd say that it was overrated. When will these people ever learn that kicking off a censorship issue is guaranteed to make people want to see it? Crash, Romance and all the rest of them would surely have disappeared without trace - which they surely deserved to do, because they are shite films - if it weren't for those elements of the religious right who chose to turn them into causes-celébres and by doing so increase the audience and thus shoot themselves in the foot.
 

'Sex and Lucia': Ad flap raises concerns
 

I'm not an attorney but I think you can safely ignore that provision on First Ammendment grounds. If you were buying from a private seller perhaps they (I don't know what covenants are enforceable and what are not...for example anything about race or ethnicity would be unenforceable) could enforce it since the First Amendment prevents government intrusions on free speech but has no bearing on restrictions privately agreed to. But since you bought it from the city if they took action against you for violating the covenant I do believe they would be tossed out on their ear.

Also working in your favor is the fact that the MPAA rating is a private classification mark and while there's no doubt that some towns try to incorporate into rules affecting movie theatre operations I doubt those would stand up to a challenge since that gives a private entity a law-making function.