June 26, 2014 • 42 mins
You may be surprised to learn those ubiquitous ratings, from G to NC-17, put on movies in America are actually handed down by anonymous employees of a secretive organization that serves as a lobbying firm for Hollywood's six biggest studios.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. But where's wal though
right over there apparently.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Man, I wish people could hear in between stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I think Jerry was recording that last one.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Oh yeah, I think so. She used to give us
a neat little outtakes, but she doesn't do that anymore.
Those days are long gone. They exist in the vault, though.
How you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I cood no, No, I don't know what's wrong with me.
I am off.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Today, out of your game?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Well, I think this is the perfect podcast to set
you straight. Why because it's something that we both have
some passion about against.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah. I think anybody who's seen the documentary this film
is not yet rated. Yeah, that would be very difficult
to not be persuaded to feel strongly about the MPAA
and its practices.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, and at least how they do things.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
But we're going to try to be objective.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say up front, I
have no problem with rating a film's content so parents
can decide whether or not it's appropriate. I think it's valuable,
but I think there are ways to do it that
I don't think the MPa does. Yes, So I just
wanted to float that early on.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Okay, I think that was probably smart. Okay, Okay, I
don't have kids, so I don't really whatever. But I mean,
I can understand the value of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, but it gives you an idea, Like I like
having an idea what I'm about to see too.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I feel like I can tell just from watching a
trailer of previewsing a movie poster. I'm pretty I'm pretty
intuitive when it comes to the marketing techniques of movies.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, but I think like being a film nerd, it's like,
is the New Is the New Avengers movie going to
be rated? R? That really tells you something, Right, it
won't be. No, it never would be, because PG thirteen
is the the that's the strikes one.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
These days, it really is. Apparently PG thirteen movies pull
in more money than all other ratings combined. Yeah, and
it's a relatively new phenomenon. You want to talk about
its origin, Yeah, let's do it. So Back in nineteen
eighty four, a man named Steven Spielberg had two movies
(02:40):
out who Steven Spielberg, Right. He directed one, Indiana Jones
and the Templar Doom, and he produced another, Gremlins. Yeah,
and both of them caught He caught a lot of
heat from both of them.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Sure, Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene specifically.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, but also the snake, the live snake at the
feast thing yeah. Yeah, all the snake babies, the eyeballs,
all that stuff. And then with Gremlins, it was just
downright terrifying in a lot of different places, especially if
you're a kid. And the reason he caught heat was
because both of those movies were rated PG. Yeah. So
(03:18):
Spielberg went to the NPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America,
and said, let's do something about this, because these clearly
aren't our movies. Yeah, but they apparently aren't PG movies either,
so maybe we should come up with something in between.
And PG thirteen was born.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, And this was before he had all this sway
in the world. He was influential, but it wasn't like
Spielberg today, who could have just waved his wand and
made it happen.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, But I think even at the time he was important.
He Yeah, there were very few directors at that time
who could have gotten something like that done.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yea too.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So that's where PG thirteen came from, and that, like
you said, that's the strike zone now. And the reason
why is because that is the kind of movie that
caters to young teenage boys, who apparently are the most
successful at getting girls to go to movies with them.
(04:18):
So if you can get a movie rated PG thirteen, yeah,
you're going to make a bunch of money.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah. Plus it makes sense, it's right there in the middle. Yeah,
you know.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
But the problem is is it's become a means of
almost advertising that rating rather than cautioning parents. It's a
way of attracting the audience.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
True, it's like this is some kids PG movie.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
This is as close to an R movie as you
can get.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
In Yeah, and I think filmmakers try to achieve that
rating by either scaling back their R rated movie or
juicing up their PG movie.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Or adding more violence. Apparently PG thirteen movies are have
tripled in violence over the last few decades. Yeah, and
they now have, according to one study, more violence than
there are rated counterparts.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, and different kinds of violence that you didn't used
to see. Yeah, you know, all right, I guess we
should go back in time a little bit. Let's is
it way back machine?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Sure, let's let's go way back in time in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
All right, it's nineteen twenty two. Hollywood and Vine is
a viable intersection in Hollywood at the time, unlike now,
although people are going to say no, they built that
area back up. Yeah, and that is when the NPA
was born in the early nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
And at the time, it was up to local authorities
or your state or your municipality to either stamp something
as moral or immoral. There were no ratings on movies.
And thanks to a guy named Will Hayes who was
the first president of the NBA, he installed the Hayes
Code and said, you're either going to pass or fail.
(06:12):
It's either going to be stamped in moral or moral.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Right. And the reason Will Hayes, who was the NPAA president,
came up with the Hayes Code, which was really extensive.
It was like, if you talk about the government, it
always has to be good, sexuality has to be repressed,
and just basically in hetero how you think about all
(06:35):
movies from like the thirties and forties. Yeah, squeaky clean
basically sure, like the division between good and evil is
very clearly defined and the good guy always wins. And
if he didn't fall into that Hayes code, like you said,
your movie would be stamped immoral. But the whole reason
he came up with this code was because local municipalities
(06:55):
could pass their own obscenity laws and that could be
bad for business.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So is it not even get your film exhibited?
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Right? So remember in the A c l U episode
where we're talking about that one, that one movie that
New York just the Catholics said no, you can't show
that here, and the a cl you went to work
getting getting the Catholics beaten in court.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Right, even though it was just a bad movie that
had something to do with well, I mean it did,
but it shouldn't have been shown because it was so terrible.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Was it bad?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I don't remember. Yeah, I mean it was supposed to
be not very good.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Okay, but it happened like that kind of thing happened
a lot like local local town said no, we're not
going to show that movie. So Hayes figured out if
if Hollywood policed itself. Then they could control what, you know,
what movies came out, and therefore everybody could make a
bunch of money. That's right, And that's the point of
the NPAA. They're the lobbying arm of six major Hollywood studios.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, they're there. They worked for them.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Well, yeah, that's one way to say it.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
But they and it's just too isn't it.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Well yeah, I mean, there's definitely an arguments these days
that independent filmmakers have a much rougher time with the NBA. Yeah,
but most of the indies too, are eventually distributed by
the majors. Anyway, I got you. You know what I'm saying. Okay,
So flash forward a bit in our way back machine
to the nineteen fifties. Things changed a little bit after
(08:23):
World War Two and people, I guess the easiest way
to say is people loosen up a little bit and
didn't mind certain elements in their entertainment any longer. Yes,
A big example this article uses Frank Sinatra got an
Oscar nomination for playing a heroin Addict in The Man
with a Golden Arm, And that couldn't have happened in
(08:44):
the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
No, millions of people hadn't died in World War Two yet,
that's right. I imagine that kind of loosens you up
as far as the seeing Chris Wards and stuff in
movies goes.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, like that's not a big deal, Like World War
two is a big deal, right, get your haunches down exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
That was the big one, the big first crack to
the Hayes code. Yeah, and then there were I think
that you said He.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Won an Oscar, right, Yeah, it was a really good
movie that kind.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Of opened the floodgate, so that by the end of
the fifties you got some like it hot and Tony
Curtis and Jack lemon are dressed like women hitting on
Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, And at that point it was pretty
obvious that Hayes code was dead. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I mean, they weren't passing the code, but they were
still getting released. So once something is subverted like that,
it's dead in the water.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Right, So there was a that was fine for a
little while. I think the Hayes code just kind of
fell to the wayside and people were releasing movies without
any kind of moral or immoral stamp. But the rating
system as we understand it today hadn't come about yet. Yeah,
so it's kind of a limbo period until nineteen sixty
eight and a store owner in New York with the
(09:57):
last name of Ginsburg got busted for selling Newti maags
to sixteen year old boys, and he took it all
the way to the Supreme Court saying, you can't say
anything about this. There's federal laws about upsidnity, not local laws.
In the Supreme Court said, you know what, we really
think it's sut to local municipalities to decide what they
(10:17):
want their miners exposed to or not. That got Hollywood's
attention because all of a sudden, local municipalities could decide
whether or not they wanted to show movies to minors
or not. So what was old became new again. And
Jack Valenti, who was in charge of the MPAA, said
we need another system of another self policing system, and
(10:39):
he came up with the rating system that we have today.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, and he, I mean Jack Valenti was the head
of the NBA for close to forty years, and he
initially the intention was to stop censorship because he feared
that the movies were going to start being censored locally
and so I think the origins of the NPA rating system.
We're art centered.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Art center, but also money centered, because again, if you
have if you have town A showing the movie, but
Town's B through L deciding that the movie is obscene
and not showing it, then you're losing that money and
B through L. So what Valenti came up with was
this idea that let us tell you what is appropriate
(11:26):
for minors or not what movie is, and we'll just
make a simple rating system. Yeah, gpg R.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Or X the old X yeah, and triple X, which
wasn't even formally a rating, it was just.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
A marketing tool.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yeah, because three exes, that's like whoa.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I wonder if anybody ever came out with one with.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Four X yeah or double X even yeah, like yeah,
we cut out that one part so X.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Christian, our colleague here, wrote a great blog post about
the former X rated movie.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Is that right? Yeah, we'll have to check that out.
That's good for brain Stuff for stuff a genius.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
On the brain stuff blog earlier this year. And you
actually recommended it on your blog, the X rating, Yeah
the best I remember it this week.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, I remember recommending one of his things I just
don't remember that one.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Just good. I thought about asking him in here, but
then I thought, yeah, we got it nice. So yeah,
back then it was G through X and well we'll
talk about you know how that changed maybe after this
message break. All right, so no longer do we have
X rayed movies. Now we have something. I guess we
(12:38):
should just go through what these ratings mean today in
twenty fourteen. Okay, so you've got your G.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
G's always been G general audience.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Anyone can see it, Yes, and that's your your family
cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Then you've got PG that means no drug use, maybe violence,
because as we'll learn, the MPa has less problems with
violence and more problems with language and sex. Huge criticism,
huge criticism PG thirteen, which we've you know, kind of
been through. Then you've got your R and that is
(13:16):
no one under said. This is a suggestion that no
one ever seventeen be admitted without a parent. And these
aren't laws, though, that's one thing that's important to point out.
Those are suggestions, And then theaters have policies.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yes, it's let's kind of dig into that. So none
of this is legally binding. Now, none of them are
anything more than recommendations. They're basically saying that this movie
has X amount of profanity or x amount of nudity,
or lacks any drug use or something like that. Sure,
(13:49):
and so for what the MPAA thinks the average moral
compass of the average American thinks about these different things
like sex, drugs, nudity, all that stuff, this movie falls
into this rating. Right, And again it's not enforceable. You
don't even need to have a rating to release a movie.
But if you want to get your movie in theaters,
(14:11):
there's basically no theater chain out there right now, no
major theater chain out there right now that will show
an unrated movie.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film
to the MPa ratings board.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
But it's de facto, but you have to do it. Yeah,
that's the.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Rub is that they say it's voluntary, but you actually
have to pay a fee to submit your movie if
you ever want to have it shown in theaters.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Right and the fee is anywhere from like twenty five
thousand dollars for a big budget movie to seven hundred
and fifty dollars for a short Yeah, and so you
submit your movie. Well, we'll get into it in a second.
Let's talk some more about the rest of the ratings.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, well, there's only one more, and that's NC seventeen,
which replaced X. And that means this is a nineteen
ninety and that basically means that it's for adults only
and you should not come in if you're under eighteen.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Right, and also means these days it's foreign or about
lesbian or gays. Basically, yeah, not fully, but sure, it's
pretty close. Yeah, and NC seventeen. The first movie to
come out with that was Henry in June. Yeah, I
have to be confused with Benny and June, and it
basically sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh, this
(15:26):
is X now, right, NC seventeen. If you jumble it
all together, it looks like X. And the whole reason
they came out with NC seventeen was to replace X
because X was associated exclusively with pornography in the minds
of moviegoers.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right, So let's get into this
the actual ratings board. There's the NPAA, and then working
for the NPA is the Classification and Ratings Administration. Kara
and Kara doesn't say whether your movie stinks or not.
Kara is eight to thirteen people and they are called raiders,
(16:05):
and they are overseen by a senior raider, and they
sit down and watch these movies and take copious notes
on what they think based on their standards. Is I
don't want to say offensive, but just noteworthy, right, Like
maybe they're not offended, but they think the average mom
and sheboygan might be offended.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Right supposedly, which is a kind of a thing because
the whole rating system, as you just kind of pointed out,
is a subjective.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Totally subjective. They supposedly. Here's the other rub is it's
all secret.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
You can find out a federal judge's name and address,
but you can't find out who a raider is for
your films. It's all conducted in private. None of this
stuff is released. And that's one of the big rubs
in that documentary and with filmmakers in general, is it's
all done behind closed doors. There's never any explanations provided.
These people are supposed to have kids between ages of
(17:03):
five and seventeen, but many of them do not, right,
either have kids at all or have kids that are
older than eighteen.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
It basically frees them up from any accountability. Yeah, to
do this all in private and in secrecy.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And until that movie by Kirby what is Kirby's last name?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Henry and June No no, the documentary Oh oh yeah,
this film is not yet rated.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, until Kirby Dick's this film is Not Yet Rated
came out, Like all of this stuff was just conjection,
conjecture in Hollywood legend. Yeah, he was the first one
to really basically he tailed these people, tail them to lunch, yeah,
to find out who they were, and eavesdrop on them,
(17:48):
and like did some digging and found like these anonymous
people did not fall into the requirements that the NPA
said they did. And so not only was it in secret,
it was it was fraudulent. Basically, this rating system, so
according to the standards, you submit your film, this group
(18:11):
of people, this anonymous group of people, watch it, they
rate it, and then they come together and vote on
a rating, and then they pass their their vote along
to a senior raider who talks to the movie's distributor
or director or producer says, here's the rating, here's why
we rated it like this, and then your face with
the choice. You can accept the rating. You can edit
(18:36):
your film as per the CRA's recommendations.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Take out these bad words, cut the sex scene a
little early, leave all the violence.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah. Or you can reject the rating and just release
your movie is unrated.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, which, well, you can try to release it, but
since no one will show it, it's really sort of
a misnomer.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right, but it's becoming increasingly a thing again. You need
the rating to get your movie shown in movie theaters.
But what happens if you don't care if your movie
comes out in theaters, video and demand, yeah, or just
releasing it to the internet.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Now, I'm curious about that. How that's going to change
the landscape?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Well, right now, it's a huge threat to the NPAA
because all of the power they wield is found in
this rating system.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
And if for theaters, yes, if no one's going to theaters.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Then the MPAA loses all that power, which is a
big deal, especially now because the NPAA is needed more
than ever as a lobbying group because of online piracy,
which we'll talk about some more. So it's a very
precarious time for the MPAA right now, and it's a
terrible time for them to be under as much scrutiny
and public attack and critique as they are. So it's
(19:51):
I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way,
and their trunk is flailing and they're honking.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That is true. One thing I should point out is
I said, is that there's no accountability. That's what the
NPA says. It's the good thing about the secrecy is
that it frees them up. That anonymity does. It frees
them up from accountability. I just don't agree, right, Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So if you want to appeal, there was apparently a
change made in response to Kirby Dick's movie the documentary
before if you were appealing your rating, which is very difficult,
almost never was done and.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Well you never want that's for sure, right.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And when you were appealing, you couldn't reference any other film.
It was totally done in a vacuum, which is pretty preposterous.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, Like that's the only way to be able to
tell us like, wait a minute, if you said this
about this, then why not this for my movie?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Which meant that there was no real standard yeah that
you could point to, or there were standards you could
point to, they just would be considered.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, or at the very least, if they do have
written standards, they don't release them, so you don't even
know what they are.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Right. So the MPAA is they've got their rating system,
they've got the appeals process.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Which was also in secret, unless that's changed, right I think.
I think the appeals board not only was the appeals
board and secret, but they weren't even just raiders. They
were people from the industry.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Right, and the Theater Owners Association exactly, whereas the people
who were raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the movie industry
and are just like average ordinary.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Parents representing your Middle America. We'll just call it, even
though I think that's insulting.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
The thing is, though, is a lot of people criticize
the NPA and say, these raiders are really representing the
six major studios who rake in ninety five percent of
the ten point nine billion dollars made in the United States. Yeah,
in theaters alone, just ticket sales, not DVD or anything
like that. Yeah, And that's what the NPAA does in
(22:10):
addition to rating. They are, like we said, the lobby
arm for these six studios, that's.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Right, and they I guess we should talk about piracy now. Huh.
That's one of their other big asides from rating movies,
they are heavy in the lobby against well, especially now
with online piracy, because the digital distribution network is it
seems like the way forward as far as distribution goes, right,
(22:37):
it's the futre. It's not the future, it's the present
and the future.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
And the NPAA has a they're accused of basically trying
to quell new technology, yeah, by just saying like, well,
let's just keep people from peer to peer file sharing
in total, yeah, so that they can't steal movies. In part,
and if you go back to the early eighties, Jack
(23:00):
Valente was known to have railed and lobbied against the
legality of VCRs.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
People are just gonna be recording things and handing them.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Out to their friends exactly. So there was a The
NPA is a long history of basically like just doing
anything at can to stifle innovation in order to protect
the profits of these big movie studios. The other problem
with them lobbying in favor of these six movie studios
is that they inherently have a conflict of interest against
(23:31):
the studios that are not part of these six that
they represent, but whose movies they still rate, so they've
been accused of more scrupulously or scrutinously rating the movies
of rival studios or foreign studios when assigning a rating.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Well, and that's why filmmakers call consistently for transparency. It's
I don't think there are many filmmakers out there saying
should be no rating, we should just maybe some like
a large fontrier, you know, or Werner Hertzog. They're probably
like nota eight things at all. But I think they
just want transparency, like open it up and let everyone
(24:13):
know how this is all done, who these people are,
and give us an idea on what in the world
we're submitting to voluntarily, quote unquote. Pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
So you were talking about online piracy and with digital
distribution being a big deal now, the MPa is needed
more than ever because they have to lobby Congress to
fight online piracy at a time when more and more
people are distributing online and going around the MPAA. So
it's losing its power, but it needs its power more
(24:44):
than ever. So, like we said, it's a precarious time
for the MPAA. And they tried a few things. They
were successful with the what was the first one in
two thousand, the Digital Sofa No, the Digital Millennium Right Act, right,
which basically that up until then it wasn't a federal
(25:05):
crime to share movies on peer to peer networks. Right,
that one did it and they got that passed. The
MPAA lobbied and got that passed.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah, they've cracked down on camcorder recording, yeap. Like when
you're in New York City and someone has that brand
new copy of Godzilla on video cassette for you, Yeah,
that's because if you've seen Seinfeld, someone went and sat
in that theater with a camera recorder and just made
a stupid, awful quality pirated version.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, And it says that those are the most common.
I guess I kind of believe that they're also the
worst quality. Like sometimes people will like get up and
move in front of the camera, like they go to
the bathroom or something, and.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah, it's I've never seen one, but I think they're terrible.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah much. I don't want to say more common, but
probably more common these days are like copies of screeners. Yeah,
Like they send out DVDs to everybody who's members of
the Academy to vote on movies and so around OSCAR
timer before Oscar time, it seems like the Internet gets
flooded with way more high quality copies of these major
(26:09):
movies that are up for awards.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, I think now they have, thanks to the NBA,
have something coded to your name now on your copy.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So like they'll know who leaked it or whatever. I
think so not surprised by that. Apparently, if you want
to show Frozen at your church, yeah, you better have
a public performance license because it is illegal to show
a movie outside of your home.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, that surprised me. But there are a lot of
especially in the summertime, a lot of community screenings, like
every city now has, you know, Atlanta shows them, and
I think at Oakland Cemetery some other places in New York.
They have them all over the place, and technically, yeah,
they're supposed to have a license to do so, I'm
sure they do the big ones.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, the big ones, I'm sure do.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
But like at your community pool and you want to
show et and.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
The Feds could come kick the gate down around the pool.
I bet everybody.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I bet they don't love HBO these days because you
know HBO go people steal that. They're just like, hey, dude,
what's your log in.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Oh right, yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
HBO came out and they're like, who cares?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, people are watching it.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah, like go watch a True Detective. Maybe you'll sign
up for HBO, yeah because you liked it, or maybe
you'll just support the show period on social media, even
though you're getting it for free. Like we're making enough
money basically.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yes, And that's something that a lot of people say,
you know, film industry, we don't really feel that bad
for you, Yeah, Seawan Austin sit down, because you guys
made ten point nine billion dollars in America in ticket
sales alone in twenty thirteen. We don't feel that bad
about this whole conundrum that the MPAA is facing.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
What Sean asked and Steel he was voices Yeah, yeah,
oh okay, yeah, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah he was. I can't remember the There was like
a whole kind of push an anti piracy pushed a
few years back, and part of it yeah yeah, and
he looked really mad about things too. But speaking of piracy,
I remember there was a story that came out recently.
It was if you think about it, at first, it's
like wah wah, but then if you really kind of
(28:29):
lended some thought. It's really disturbing. There were there was
a report of prisoners at a prison being shown pirated movies,
and some of the prisoners were there for pirrating movies,
and like, really think about the injustice behind that. Yeah,
(28:50):
like that's just crazy town. Imagine if you've been like
selling counterfeit first, and you go to prison and all
of the all the guards are wearing counterfeit for coats.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
It'd be pretty swing in prison.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It'd be weird, but it would also be unjust.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But in relation to this, it's just more and more
widespread every day. It feels like it's it's a losing battle.
I think that the NPAA is fighting right now.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Well, I think I read somewhere today that they I
think they might release a few of the Raiders' names
per film, not all like thirteen, right, But I need
to look up that, look that up again, because that
I don't know. I don't see the why releasing a
three out of thirteen names does anybody any good?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
It does zero good. Yeah, And speaking of doing zero good,
this there's kind of a new attachment to the rating
system that they have now. It's called check the box. Yeah,
and it's it's basically a brief description of why a
movie is, like PG thirteen. Yeah, so it'll say like
(29:55):
intense sci fi action or something like that, or some
drug use. Yeah, that kind of thing. And some critics
of the NPAA say it's just basically like shooting a
laser beam into like a fifteen year old boy's brain,
like brief nudity. Come see it PG thirteen, Check it out, kid,
(30:17):
And I think a lot of people are looking at
it like it's it's just kind of a disingenuous advertisement,
cynical advertisement, because the NPAA is accused of not regulating
or even potentially directly marketing to kids under the age
of the movies that are being advertised. So like you're
(30:40):
seeing a lot of ads for like R rated movies
on websites that are like very popular among like the
seventeen and undercrowd. There's a lot of tie ins for
PG thirteen movies with like kids toys for kids who
are under who are under thirteen. And so there's like
this idea that there's the NPA supposedly serving America's moral compasses. Yeah,
(31:07):
but really at the same time, they're undermining that morality
that they're supposedly defending, yeah, by marketing and exploiting kids.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, that'd be like a cigarette company having a cartoon
animal as their mascot.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Be weird? Well, one thing about the subjectivity of it
and the fact that it is a closed book and
they filmmakers don't even know, you know, how to tailor
their movie to achieve a certain rating, I mean to
within a certain degree. But they've learned how to manipulate
it because there is no set standard by if you
(31:44):
watch that film as not yet rated. And you've heard
plenty of stories over the years about filmmakers intentionally putting
in things that they never intend to be in the
final movie. Oh yeah, just to sort of distract from
some of the other things. So they'll shoot something kind
of really outrageous to get the MPA's Raiders haunches up
and what they were never going to keep that part anyway, right,
(32:06):
So they're subverting the system because there is no set standard.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, and they're just the stuff they want to keep
in is comparatively exactly more palatable.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
And if you don't have the set standard, where you
can go and I wonder what those sheets look like
on the interior, you know. I mean that's the great mystery. Yeah,
surely they have their own interior standards. They're not just
like watch it and see what you think.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Well, they have group discussions too, man, I'd love to
sit in on those.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
So the I read Another criticism of MPa is that
the difference between PG thirteen movies and our movies these
days is the profanity and the sexuality. That they're similar
in violence, if not more violent in PG thirteen movies,
and that this is kind of messed up, that the
NPAA has very little problem with violence. Yeah, but when
(32:58):
it comes to bad words or sexuality of almost any
nature except for women being objectified and men being gratified, Yeah,
then the MPAA suddenly puckers up. Well.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, in any a woman achieving receiving sexual gratification, or
a homosexual couple, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Virtually like guaranteed or depending on how they do it,
are if it's coming out of like one of the
major studios.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So in other words, a man can receive pleasure from
a woman, and of course it's scrutinized somewhat, because any
kind of sex is more heavily scrutinized than violence, right,
but if a woman does like you said, or if
it's a gay couple, it's all over so homophobic, misogynistic.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
You decide right, and fetishistic of violence, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah. Like, here's one example. There's a great article called
don't Expect any major changes to the NPA rating system
in twenty fourteen. Yeah, and it's basically Chris Dodd, who's
the new head and the gang, digging in and saying,
you know what, we talked to your average parents and
we pull them and this is what they want. But
(34:18):
they release No, none of those studies are released. Yeah,
none of those conversations are released. A movie like Filamina,
which you saw, was rated at R. Yeah. It was
about a lady looking for a long lost sun.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
It was so far from an R movie, it was ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, but it had a couple of F bombs in it,
so they cut those out and they bring it to
a PG thirteen. You might think, who cares cut up
the F bombs make it PG thirteen, But there's something
bigger going on here, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah, there's a great AV Club article about how just
totally out of step a lot of the ratings are
and they have fifteen movies listed and basically talk about
their ratings, like the first one. They talk about once. Yeah,
that romantic. It wasn't like a romantic comedy, wasn't.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
No, I would say it was a other sweet just
a modern day romance told through music. It wasn't a musical,
but there are a lot of musical numbers.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Highly inoffensive love story. Yeah, very sweet movie. It had
the same rating as Hostile Too, which is basically torture porn.
They both got the same rating.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Yeah, we should read this first line from the av club.
In early summer of two thousand and seven, two films
were released with our ratings. One featured a scene where
a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling while another
naked woman slashes her with a scyth and bays in
her blood. The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together,
falling in love and opting not to act on it.
(35:53):
Like there was never any sex scene. They didn't even
get together. Really, Nope, they're both rated.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Are both rated are because of profanity.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Rushmore rated R for the uh scene at the end,
whether Max is putting on the play the Vietnam play
and there is a shot of a couple of little
kids looking at on the set. There's some Playboy centerfolds
up in the locker, yep, like on the Vietnam set,
and it shows these little kids like looking at those
like a twelve year old would probably do.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
And it got an R for that, got an R
for that. Happiness Todd Solins one of my favorite movies
of all time. Yeah, they tried to give it an
NC seventeen rating, and he said, you know what, I'm
not cutting anything. You can just go take a long
walk off a short pier, is what I think, he
famously said to them. Yeah, and he released his movie
(36:47):
as unrated.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Oh really, yep, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Wait to go, Todd Solins.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Or if you're looking at some serious homophobia, The Great
nineteen eighty nine movie and Longtime Companion features no real
sex acts at all, nothing explicit. In fact, the AV
Club says it could show on network TV today with
just a few alterations. But it was about a gay
(37:12):
couple and uh so I got an NC seventeen.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah. There was something called Afternoon Delight, which was a
movie about a woman who hires a giglow and it
apparently is heavy on the the woman receiving sexual gratification.
It got an R rating despite and it got an
(37:39):
OUR rating after apparently the director cut a lot of
stuff out and the director said, what the hey after
Wolfe of Wall Street came out.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Like have you seen this movie with like some very.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Graphic apparent sex scenes between a man and a woman.
But Leonardo DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most,
So it's fine. It's an R, right, blue is the
warmest color.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah. Last year that a teenage lesbian love story, and
since seventeen, yeah, got a lot of attention, and there
were some theaters that allowed high school age kids to
go see that anyway.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Because again, this isn't law, it's not binding, it's up
to the theaters.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah, it's just so strange that such a small group
of people have such influence on such a large industry.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
And yeah, the secret the more you dig into it,
the more conflicts of interest arise, and the more arbitrary
the standards become, the more blood boiling it is. I
highly recommend you go read some stuff like rated R
for ridiculous by Kirby Dick his Little uh yeah, his
little op ed about the MPAA that one US News
(38:47):
and World Report article you wrote or suggested it was good.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
I wish I wrote it.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Had you been there, would have been used correctly.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Oh did they misuse it?
Speaker 2 (38:58):
What? Yeah? I know?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Terrible. So the MPa will defend themselves and they say
that there's no such bias and that we all these
objectionable scenes are rated on the quality and how graphic
it is. But if you just look at the you'd
have to be a dummy not to see these correlations, right,
And the fact that they don't seem to care that
(39:20):
much about violence in this age where I don't know,
does it influence people to go shoot up a school?
Who knows?
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Around, Yes, but what was it?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
It's like somebody unsuccessfully tries to carry a bomb onto
a plane in their shoe. We all take our shoes off, right.
There's like thirty something school shootings after Columbine and absolutely
nothing's changed.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah. Or the onion article that's going around too now,
is this is something that can't be prevented, says the
only country where this kind of thing happens all the time,
something like that.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Huh, I'm paraphrasing, Oh yeah, that's the onion.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Yeah, good stuff, MPa. Keep keep doing the fighting, the
good fight.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah. Go check out, like, just go start reading up
on it. It's funny how much we just take this
stuff for granted, but when just start digging just slightly
beneath the surface at the very least. See this film
is not yet rated. It's really good. Yeah, really engrossing.
And you know, for every one hundred documentaries that come out,
what five of them are like really great? Sure, most
(40:30):
of them are pretty good, some are terrible. So any
really good one is worth seeing just in and of itself.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Agreed.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
If you want to learn more about the MPAA, type
those letters into the search part housetifforks dot com. And
I said, search parts, it's time for listener mail. Uh.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
I'm gonna call this wild Parrots. Josh mentioned in the
Tattoo podcast that he had heard parrots like to hang
together when free, and I wanted to burst in the
podcast booth and tell you about the wild pay of
San Francisco. I'm not going to get into it except
to say that, over the course of my life, the
parrots in San Francisco are a sort of living legend
that one would occaionally get the privilege of spotting now
(41:08):
and then. However, about three years ago, I moved in
with my aunt in the little San Francisco suburb of Brisbane,
and apparently the famous flocks of parrots were also making
their home there. Since it was warmer, unless windy, these
parrots were often hanging right outside my bedroom window, which
is pretty amazing or no, she says, amusing. I say
it's amazing, but also somewhat annoying, especially since my first
(41:33):
son was just a little guy then and a very
light sleeper. And these suckers are loud, that is true,
they are very loud. Also, guys, I'm sending you the
link to watch the preview of the two thousand and
three documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. So I
didn't know there was a documentary.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
I've heard that. Yeah, I've heard of that before. I
never knew what it was about.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Amy. I will check that out.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Thank you, thank you for writing it. Yeah, thanks a lot. Amy.
If you have a documentary recommendation, we are always interested
in those.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Heck.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, you can tweet them to us at s YSK podcast.
You can post them on Facebook. Dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know, and you can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at houstuffworks dot com and as always,
joined us at our home on the web, the Beautiful
Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Welcome to you stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. But where's wal though
right over there apparently.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Man, I wish people could hear in between stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I think Jerry was recording that last one.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Oh yeah, I think so. She used to give us
a neat little outtakes, but she doesn't do that anymore.
Those days are long gone. They exist in the vault, though.
How you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I cood no, No, I don't know what's wrong with me.
I am off.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Today, out of your game?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Well, I think this is the perfect podcast to set
you straight. Why because it's something that we both have
some passion about against.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah. I think anybody who's seen the documentary this film
is not yet rated. Yeah, that would be very difficult
to not be persuaded to feel strongly about the MPAA
and its practices.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, and at least how they do things.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
But we're going to try to be objective.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say up front, I
have no problem with rating a film's content so parents
can decide whether or not it's appropriate. I think it's valuable,
but I think there are ways to do it that
I don't think the MPa does. Yes, So I just
wanted to float that early on.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Okay, I think that was probably smart. Okay, Okay, I
don't have kids, so I don't really whatever. But I mean,
I can understand the value of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, but it gives you an idea, Like I like
having an idea what I'm about to see too.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I feel like I can tell just from watching a
trailer of previewsing a movie poster. I'm pretty I'm pretty
intuitive when it comes to the marketing techniques of movies.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, but I think like being a film nerd, it's like,
is the New Is the New Avengers movie going to
be rated? R? That really tells you something, Right, it
won't be. No, it never would be, because PG thirteen
is the the that's the strikes one.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
These days, it really is. Apparently PG thirteen movies pull
in more money than all other ratings combined. Yeah, and
it's a relatively new phenomenon. You want to talk about
its origin, Yeah, let's do it. So Back in nineteen
eighty four, a man named Steven Spielberg had two movies
(02:40):
out who Steven Spielberg, Right. He directed one, Indiana Jones
and the Templar Doom, and he produced another, Gremlins. Yeah,
and both of them caught He caught a lot of
heat from both of them.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Sure, Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene specifically.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, but also the snake, the live snake at the
feast thing yeah. Yeah, all the snake babies, the eyeballs,
all that stuff. And then with Gremlins, it was just
downright terrifying in a lot of different places, especially if
you're a kid. And the reason he caught heat was
because both of those movies were rated PG. Yeah. So
(03:18):
Spielberg went to the NPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America,
and said, let's do something about this, because these clearly
aren't our movies. Yeah, but they apparently aren't PG movies either,
so maybe we should come up with something in between.
And PG thirteen was born.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, And this was before he had all this sway
in the world. He was influential, but it wasn't like
Spielberg today, who could have just waved his wand and
made it happen.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, But I think even at the time he was important.
He Yeah, there were very few directors at that time
who could have gotten something like that done.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yea too.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
So that's where PG thirteen came from, and that, like
you said, that's the strike zone now. And the reason
why is because that is the kind of movie that
caters to young teenage boys, who apparently are the most
successful at getting girls to go to movies with them.
(04:18):
So if you can get a movie rated PG thirteen, yeah,
you're going to make a bunch of money.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah. Plus it makes sense, it's right there in the middle. Yeah,
you know.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
But the problem is is it's become a means of
almost advertising that rating rather than cautioning parents. It's a
way of attracting the audience.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
True, it's like this is some kids PG movie.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
This is as close to an R movie as you
can get.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
In Yeah, and I think filmmakers try to achieve that
rating by either scaling back their R rated movie or
juicing up their PG movie.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Or adding more violence. Apparently PG thirteen movies are have
tripled in violence over the last few decades. Yeah, and
they now have, according to one study, more violence than
there are rated counterparts.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, and different kinds of violence that you didn't used
to see. Yeah, you know, all right, I guess we
should go back in time a little bit. Let's is
it way back machine?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Sure, let's let's go way back in time in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
All right, it's nineteen twenty two. Hollywood and Vine is
a viable intersection in Hollywood at the time, unlike now,
although people are going to say no, they built that
area back up. Yeah, and that is when the NPA
was born in the early nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
And at the time, it was up to local authorities
or your state or your municipality to either stamp something
as moral or immoral. There were no ratings on movies.
And thanks to a guy named Will Hayes who was
the first president of the NBA, he installed the Hayes
Code and said, you're either going to pass or fail.
(06:12):
It's either going to be stamped in moral or moral.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Right. And the reason Will Hayes, who was the NPAA president,
came up with the Hayes Code, which was really extensive.
It was like, if you talk about the government, it
always has to be good, sexuality has to be repressed,
and just basically in hetero how you think about all
(06:35):
movies from like the thirties and forties. Yeah, squeaky clean
basically sure, like the division between good and evil is
very clearly defined and the good guy always wins. And
if he didn't fall into that Hayes code, like you said,
your movie would be stamped immoral. But the whole reason
he came up with this code was because local municipalities
(06:55):
could pass their own obscenity laws and that could be
bad for business.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So is it not even get your film exhibited?
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Right? So remember in the A c l U episode
where we're talking about that one, that one movie that
New York just the Catholics said no, you can't show
that here, and the a cl you went to work
getting getting the Catholics beaten in court.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Right, even though it was just a bad movie that
had something to do with well, I mean it did,
but it shouldn't have been shown because it was so terrible.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Was it bad?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I don't remember. Yeah, I mean it was supposed to
be not very good.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Okay, but it happened like that kind of thing happened
a lot like local local town said no, we're not
going to show that movie. So Hayes figured out if
if Hollywood policed itself. Then they could control what, you know,
what movies came out, and therefore everybody could make a
bunch of money. That's right, And that's the point of
the NPAA. They're the lobbying arm of six major Hollywood studios.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, they're there. They worked for them.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Well, yeah, that's one way to say it.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
But they and it's just too isn't it.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Well yeah, I mean, there's definitely an arguments these days
that independent filmmakers have a much rougher time with the NBA. Yeah,
but most of the indies too, are eventually distributed by
the majors. Anyway, I got you. You know what I'm saying. Okay,
So flash forward a bit in our way back machine
to the nineteen fifties. Things changed a little bit after
(08:23):
World War Two and people, I guess the easiest way
to say is people loosen up a little bit and
didn't mind certain elements in their entertainment any longer. Yes,
A big example this article uses Frank Sinatra got an
Oscar nomination for playing a heroin Addict in The Man
with a Golden Arm, And that couldn't have happened in
(08:44):
the nineteen forties.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
No, millions of people hadn't died in World War Two yet,
that's right. I imagine that kind of loosens you up
as far as the seeing Chris Wards and stuff in
movies goes.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, like that's not a big deal, Like World War
two is a big deal, right, get your haunches down exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
That was the big one, the big first crack to
the Hayes code. Yeah, and then there were I think
that you said He.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Won an Oscar, right, Yeah, it was a really good
movie that kind.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Of opened the floodgate, so that by the end of
the fifties you got some like it hot and Tony
Curtis and Jack lemon are dressed like women hitting on
Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, And at that point it was pretty
obvious that Hayes code was dead. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I mean, they weren't passing the code, but they were
still getting released. So once something is subverted like that,
it's dead in the water.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Right, So there was a that was fine for a
little while. I think the Hayes code just kind of
fell to the wayside and people were releasing movies without
any kind of moral or immoral stamp. But the rating
system as we understand it today hadn't come about yet. Yeah,
so it's kind of a limbo period until nineteen sixty
eight and a store owner in New York with the
(09:57):
last name of Ginsburg got busted for selling Newti maags
to sixteen year old boys, and he took it all
the way to the Supreme Court saying, you can't say
anything about this. There's federal laws about upsidnity, not local laws.
In the Supreme Court said, you know what, we really
think it's sut to local municipalities to decide what they
(10:17):
want their miners exposed to or not. That got Hollywood's
attention because all of a sudden, local municipalities could decide
whether or not they wanted to show movies to minors
or not. So what was old became new again. And
Jack Valenti, who was in charge of the MPAA, said
we need another system of another self policing system, and
(10:39):
he came up with the rating system that we have today.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, and he, I mean Jack Valenti was the head
of the NBA for close to forty years, and he
initially the intention was to stop censorship because he feared
that the movies were going to start being censored locally
and so I think the origins of the NPA rating system.
We're art centered.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Art center, but also money centered, because again, if you
have if you have town A showing the movie, but
Town's B through L deciding that the movie is obscene
and not showing it, then you're losing that money and
B through L. So what Valenti came up with was
this idea that let us tell you what is appropriate
(11:26):
for minors or not what movie is, and we'll just
make a simple rating system. Yeah, gpg R.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Or X the old X yeah, and triple X, which
wasn't even formally a rating, it was just.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
A marketing tool.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yeah, because three exes, that's like whoa.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I wonder if anybody ever came out with one with.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Four X yeah or double X even yeah, like yeah,
we cut out that one part so X.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Christian, our colleague here, wrote a great blog post about
the former X rated movie.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Is that right? Yeah, we'll have to check that out.
That's good for brain Stuff for stuff a genius.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
On the brain stuff blog earlier this year. And you
actually recommended it on your blog, the X rating, Yeah
the best I remember it this week.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, I remember recommending one of his things I just
don't remember that one.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Just good. I thought about asking him in here, but
then I thought, yeah, we got it nice. So yeah,
back then it was G through X and well we'll
talk about you know how that changed maybe after this
message break. All right, so no longer do we have
X rayed movies. Now we have something. I guess we
(12:38):
should just go through what these ratings mean today in
twenty fourteen. Okay, so you've got your G.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
G's always been G general audience.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Anyone can see it, Yes, and that's your your family
cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Then you've got PG that means no drug use, maybe violence,
because as we'll learn, the MPa has less problems with
violence and more problems with language and sex. Huge criticism,
huge criticism PG thirteen, which we've you know, kind of
been through. Then you've got your R and that is
(13:16):
no one under said. This is a suggestion that no
one ever seventeen be admitted without a parent. And these
aren't laws, though, that's one thing that's important to point out.
Those are suggestions, And then theaters have policies.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yes, it's let's kind of dig into that. So none
of this is legally binding. Now, none of them are
anything more than recommendations. They're basically saying that this movie
has X amount of profanity or x amount of nudity,
or lacks any drug use or something like that. Sure,
(13:49):
and so for what the MPAA thinks the average moral
compass of the average American thinks about these different things
like sex, drugs, nudity, all that stuff, this movie falls
into this rating. Right, And again it's not enforceable. You
don't even need to have a rating to release a movie.
But if you want to get your movie in theaters,
(14:11):
there's basically no theater chain out there right now, no
major theater chain out there right now that will show
an unrated movie.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yeah, it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film
to the MPa ratings board.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
But it's de facto, but you have to do it. Yeah,
that's the.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Rub is that they say it's voluntary, but you actually
have to pay a fee to submit your movie if
you ever want to have it shown in theaters.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Right and the fee is anywhere from like twenty five
thousand dollars for a big budget movie to seven hundred
and fifty dollars for a short Yeah, and so you
submit your movie. Well, we'll get into it in a second.
Let's talk some more about the rest of the ratings.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, well, there's only one more, and that's NC seventeen,
which replaced X. And that means this is a nineteen
ninety and that basically means that it's for adults only
and you should not come in if you're under eighteen.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Right, and also means these days it's foreign or about
lesbian or gays. Basically, yeah, not fully, but sure, it's
pretty close. Yeah, and NC seventeen. The first movie to
come out with that was Henry in June. Yeah, I
have to be confused with Benny and June, and it
basically sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh, this
(15:26):
is X now, right, NC seventeen. If you jumble it
all together, it looks like X. And the whole reason
they came out with NC seventeen was to replace X
because X was associated exclusively with pornography in the minds
of moviegoers.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right, So let's get into this
the actual ratings board. There's the NPAA, and then working
for the NPA is the Classification and Ratings Administration. Kara
and Kara doesn't say whether your movie stinks or not.
Kara is eight to thirteen people and they are called raiders,
(16:05):
and they are overseen by a senior raider, and they
sit down and watch these movies and take copious notes
on what they think based on their standards. Is I
don't want to say offensive, but just noteworthy, right, Like
maybe they're not offended, but they think the average mom
and sheboygan might be offended.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Right supposedly, which is a kind of a thing because
the whole rating system, as you just kind of pointed out,
is a subjective.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Totally subjective. They supposedly. Here's the other rub is it's
all secret.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
You can find out a federal judge's name and address,
but you can't find out who a raider is for
your films. It's all conducted in private. None of this
stuff is released. And that's one of the big rubs
in that documentary and with filmmakers in general, is it's
all done behind closed doors. There's never any explanations provided.
These people are supposed to have kids between ages of
(17:03):
five and seventeen, but many of them do not, right,
either have kids at all or have kids that are
older than eighteen.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
It basically frees them up from any accountability. Yeah, to
do this all in private and in secrecy.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And until that movie by Kirby what is Kirby's last name?
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Henry and June No no, the documentary Oh oh yeah,
this film is not yet rated.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, until Kirby Dick's this film is Not Yet Rated
came out, Like all of this stuff was just conjection,
conjecture in Hollywood legend. Yeah, he was the first one
to really basically he tailed these people, tail them to lunch, yeah,
to find out who they were, and eavesdrop on them,
(17:48):
and like did some digging and found like these anonymous
people did not fall into the requirements that the NPA
said they did. And so not only was it in secret,
it was it was fraudulent. Basically, this rating system, so
according to the standards, you submit your film, this group
(18:11):
of people, this anonymous group of people, watch it, they
rate it, and then they come together and vote on
a rating, and then they pass their their vote along
to a senior raider who talks to the movie's distributor
or director or producer says, here's the rating, here's why
we rated it like this, and then your face with
the choice. You can accept the rating. You can edit
(18:36):
your film as per the CRA's recommendations.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Take out these bad words, cut the sex scene a
little early, leave all the violence.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah. Or you can reject the rating and just release
your movie is unrated.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, which, well, you can try to release it, but
since no one will show it, it's really sort of
a misnomer.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right, but it's becoming increasingly a thing again. You need
the rating to get your movie shown in movie theaters.
But what happens if you don't care if your movie
comes out in theaters, video and demand, yeah, or just
releasing it to the internet.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Now, I'm curious about that. How that's going to change
the landscape?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Well, right now, it's a huge threat to the NPAA
because all of the power they wield is found in
this rating system.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
And if for theaters, yes, if no one's going to theaters.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Then the MPAA loses all that power, which is a
big deal, especially now because the NPAA is needed more
than ever as a lobbying group because of online piracy,
which we'll talk about some more. So it's a very
precarious time for the MPAA right now, and it's a
terrible time for them to be under as much scrutiny
and public attack and critique as they are. So it's
(19:51):
I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way,
and their trunk is flailing and they're honking.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That is true. One thing I should point out is
I said, is that there's no accountability. That's what the
NPA says. It's the good thing about the secrecy is
that it frees them up. That anonymity does. It frees
them up from accountability. I just don't agree, right, Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So if you want to appeal, there was apparently a
change made in response to Kirby Dick's movie the documentary
before if you were appealing your rating, which is very difficult,
almost never was done and.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Well you never want that's for sure, right.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And when you were appealing, you couldn't reference any other film.
It was totally done in a vacuum, which is pretty preposterous.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, Like that's the only way to be able to
tell us like, wait a minute, if you said this
about this, then why not this for my movie?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Which meant that there was no real standard yeah that
you could point to, or there were standards you could
point to, they just would be considered.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, or at the very least, if they do have
written standards, they don't release them, so you don't even
know what they are.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Right. So the MPAA is they've got their rating system,
they've got the appeals process.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Which was also in secret, unless that's changed, right I think.
I think the appeals board not only was the appeals
board and secret, but they weren't even just raiders. They
were people from the industry.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Right, and the Theater Owners Association exactly, whereas the people
who were raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the movie industry
and are just like average ordinary.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Parents representing your Middle America. We'll just call it, even
though I think that's insulting.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
The thing is, though, is a lot of people criticize
the NPA and say, these raiders are really representing the
six major studios who rake in ninety five percent of
the ten point nine billion dollars made in the United States. Yeah,
in theaters alone, just ticket sales, not DVD or anything
like that. Yeah, And that's what the NPAA does in
(22:10):
addition to rating. They are, like we said, the lobby
arm for these six studios, that's.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Right, and they I guess we should talk about piracy now. Huh.
That's one of their other big asides from rating movies,
they are heavy in the lobby against well, especially now
with online piracy, because the digital distribution network is it
seems like the way forward as far as distribution goes, right,
(22:37):
it's the futre. It's not the future, it's the present
and the future.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
And the NPAA has a they're accused of basically trying
to quell new technology, yeah, by just saying like, well,
let's just keep people from peer to peer file sharing
in total, yeah, so that they can't steal movies. In part,
and if you go back to the early eighties, Jack
(23:00):
Valente was known to have railed and lobbied against the
legality of VCRs.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
People are just gonna be recording things and handing them.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Out to their friends exactly. So there was a The
NPA is a long history of basically like just doing
anything at can to stifle innovation in order to protect
the profits of these big movie studios. The other problem
with them lobbying in favor of these six movie studios
is that they inherently have a conflict of interest against
(23:31):
the studios that are not part of these six that
they represent, but whose movies they still rate, so they've
been accused of more scrupulously or scrutinously rating the movies
of rival studios or foreign studios when assigning a rating.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Well, and that's why filmmakers call consistently for transparency. It's
I don't think there are many filmmakers out there saying
should be no rating, we should just maybe some like
a large fontrier, you know, or Werner Hertzog. They're probably
like nota eight things at all. But I think they
just want transparency, like open it up and let everyone
(24:13):
know how this is all done, who these people are,
and give us an idea on what in the world
we're submitting to voluntarily, quote unquote. Pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
So you were talking about online piracy and with digital
distribution being a big deal now, the MPa is needed
more than ever because they have to lobby Congress to
fight online piracy at a time when more and more
people are distributing online and going around the MPAA. So
it's losing its power, but it needs its power more
(24:44):
than ever. So, like we said, it's a precarious time
for the MPAA. And they tried a few things. They
were successful with the what was the first one in
two thousand, the Digital Sofa No, the Digital Millennium Right Act, right,
which basically that up until then it wasn't a federal
(25:05):
crime to share movies on peer to peer networks. Right,
that one did it and they got that passed. The
MPAA lobbied and got that passed.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yeah, they've cracked down on camcorder recording, yeap. Like when
you're in New York City and someone has that brand
new copy of Godzilla on video cassette for you, Yeah,
that's because if you've seen Seinfeld, someone went and sat
in that theater with a camera recorder and just made
a stupid, awful quality pirated version.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, And it says that those are the most common.
I guess I kind of believe that they're also the
worst quality. Like sometimes people will like get up and
move in front of the camera, like they go to
the bathroom or something, and.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeah, it's I've never seen one, but I think they're terrible.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah much. I don't want to say more common, but
probably more common these days are like copies of screeners. Yeah,
Like they send out DVDs to everybody who's members of
the Academy to vote on movies and so around OSCAR
timer before Oscar time, it seems like the Internet gets
flooded with way more high quality copies of these major
(26:09):
movies that are up for awards.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah, I think now they have, thanks to the NBA,
have something coded to your name now on your copy.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So like they'll know who leaked it or whatever. I
think so not surprised by that. Apparently, if you want
to show Frozen at your church, yeah, you better have
a public performance license because it is illegal to show
a movie outside of your home.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, that surprised me. But there are a lot of
especially in the summertime, a lot of community screenings, like
every city now has, you know, Atlanta shows them, and
I think at Oakland Cemetery some other places in New York.
They have them all over the place, and technically, yeah,
they're supposed to have a license to do so, I'm
sure they do the big ones.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, the big ones, I'm sure do.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
But like at your community pool and you want to
show et and.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
The Feds could come kick the gate down around the pool.
I bet everybody.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I bet they don't love HBO these days because you
know HBO go people steal that. They're just like, hey, dude,
what's your log in.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Oh right, yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
HBO came out and they're like, who cares?
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Yeah, people are watching it.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah, like go watch a True Detective. Maybe you'll sign
up for HBO, yeah because you liked it, or maybe
you'll just support the show period on social media, even
though you're getting it for free. Like we're making enough
money basically.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yes, And that's something that a lot of people say,
you know, film industry, we don't really feel that bad
for you, Yeah, Seawan Austin sit down, because you guys
made ten point nine billion dollars in America in ticket
sales alone in twenty thirteen. We don't feel that bad
about this whole conundrum that the MPAA is facing.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
What Sean asked and Steel he was voices Yeah, yeah,
oh okay, yeah, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah he was. I can't remember the There was like
a whole kind of push an anti piracy pushed a
few years back, and part of it yeah yeah, and
he looked really mad about things too. But speaking of piracy,
I remember there was a story that came out recently.
It was if you think about it, at first, it's
like wah wah, but then if you really kind of
(28:29):
lended some thought. It's really disturbing. There were there was
a report of prisoners at a prison being shown pirated movies,
and some of the prisoners were there for pirrating movies,
and like, really think about the injustice behind that. Yeah,
(28:50):
like that's just crazy town. Imagine if you've been like
selling counterfeit first, and you go to prison and all
of the all the guards are wearing counterfeit for coats.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
It'd be pretty swing in prison.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It'd be weird, but it would also be unjust.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But in relation to this, it's just more and more
widespread every day. It feels like it's it's a losing battle.
I think that the NPAA is fighting right now.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Well, I think I read somewhere today that they I
think they might release a few of the Raiders' names
per film, not all like thirteen, right, But I need
to look up that, look that up again, because that
I don't know. I don't see the why releasing a
three out of thirteen names does anybody any good?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
It does zero good. Yeah, And speaking of doing zero good,
this there's kind of a new attachment to the rating
system that they have now. It's called check the box. Yeah,
and it's it's basically a brief description of why a
movie is, like PG thirteen. Yeah, so it'll say like
(29:55):
intense sci fi action or something like that, or some
drug use. Yeah, that kind of thing. And some critics
of the NPAA say it's just basically like shooting a
laser beam into like a fifteen year old boy's brain,
like brief nudity. Come see it PG thirteen, Check it out, kid,
(30:17):
And I think a lot of people are looking at
it like it's it's just kind of a disingenuous advertisement,
cynical advertisement, because the NPAA is accused of not regulating
or even potentially directly marketing to kids under the age
of the movies that are being advertised. So like you're
(30:40):
seeing a lot of ads for like R rated movies
on websites that are like very popular among like the
seventeen and undercrowd. There's a lot of tie ins for
PG thirteen movies with like kids toys for kids who
are under who are under thirteen. And so there's like
this idea that there's the NPA supposedly serving America's moral compasses. Yeah,
(31:07):
but really at the same time, they're undermining that morality
that they're supposedly defending, yeah, by marketing and exploiting kids.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, that'd be like a cigarette company having a cartoon
animal as their mascot.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Be weird? Well, one thing about the subjectivity of it
and the fact that it is a closed book and
they filmmakers don't even know, you know, how to tailor
their movie to achieve a certain rating, I mean to
within a certain degree. But they've learned how to manipulate
it because there is no set standard by if you
(31:44):
watch that film as not yet rated. And you've heard
plenty of stories over the years about filmmakers intentionally putting
in things that they never intend to be in the
final movie. Oh yeah, just to sort of distract from
some of the other things. So they'll shoot something kind
of really outrageous to get the MPA's Raiders haunches up
and what they were never going to keep that part anyway, right,
(32:06):
So they're subverting the system because there is no set standard.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, and they're just the stuff they want to keep
in is comparatively exactly more palatable.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
And if you don't have the set standard, where you
can go and I wonder what those sheets look like
on the interior, you know. I mean that's the great mystery. Yeah,
surely they have their own interior standards. They're not just
like watch it and see what you think.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Well, they have group discussions too, man, I'd love to
sit in on those.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
So the I read Another criticism of MPa is that
the difference between PG thirteen movies and our movies these
days is the profanity and the sexuality. That they're similar
in violence, if not more violent in PG thirteen movies,
and that this is kind of messed up, that the
NPAA has very little problem with violence. Yeah, but when
(32:58):
it comes to bad words or sexuality of almost any
nature except for women being objectified and men being gratified, Yeah,
then the MPAA suddenly puckers up. Well.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, in any a woman achieving receiving sexual gratification, or
a homosexual couple, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Virtually like guaranteed or depending on how they do it,
are if it's coming out of like one of the
major studios.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So in other words, a man can receive pleasure from
a woman, and of course it's scrutinized somewhat, because any
kind of sex is more heavily scrutinized than violence, right,
but if a woman does like you said, or if
it's a gay couple, it's all over so homophobic, misogynistic.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
You decide right, and fetishistic of violence, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah. Like, here's one example. There's a great article called
don't Expect any major changes to the NPA rating system
in twenty fourteen. Yeah, and it's basically Chris Dodd, who's
the new head and the gang, digging in and saying,
you know what, we talked to your average parents and
we pull them and this is what they want. But
(34:18):
they release No, none of those studies are released. Yeah,
none of those conversations are released. A movie like Filamina,
which you saw, was rated at R. Yeah. It was
about a lady looking for a long lost sun.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
It was so far from an R movie, it was ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, but it had a couple of F bombs in it,
so they cut those out and they bring it to
a PG thirteen. You might think, who cares cut up
the F bombs make it PG thirteen, But there's something
bigger going on here, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah, there's a great AV Club article about how just
totally out of step a lot of the ratings are
and they have fifteen movies listed and basically talk about
their ratings, like the first one. They talk about once. Yeah,
that romantic. It wasn't like a romantic comedy, wasn't.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
No, I would say it was a other sweet just
a modern day romance told through music. It wasn't a musical,
but there are a lot of musical numbers.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Highly inoffensive love story. Yeah, very sweet movie. It had
the same rating as Hostile Too, which is basically torture porn.
They both got the same rating.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Yeah, we should read this first line from the av club.
In early summer of two thousand and seven, two films
were released with our ratings. One featured a scene where
a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling while another
naked woman slashes her with a scyth and bays in
her blood. The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together,
falling in love and opting not to act on it.
(35:53):
Like there was never any sex scene. They didn't even
get together. Really, Nope, they're both rated.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Are both rated are because of profanity.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Rushmore rated R for the uh scene at the end,
whether Max is putting on the play the Vietnam play
and there is a shot of a couple of little
kids looking at on the set. There's some Playboy centerfolds
up in the locker, yep, like on the Vietnam set,
and it shows these little kids like looking at those
like a twelve year old would probably do.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
And it got an R for that, got an R
for that. Happiness Todd Solins one of my favorite movies
of all time. Yeah, they tried to give it an
NC seventeen rating, and he said, you know what, I'm
not cutting anything. You can just go take a long
walk off a short pier, is what I think, he
famously said to them. Yeah, and he released his movie
(36:47):
as unrated.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Oh really, yep, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Wait to go, Todd Solins.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Or if you're looking at some serious homophobia, The Great
nineteen eighty nine movie and Longtime Companion features no real
sex acts at all, nothing explicit. In fact, the AV
Club says it could show on network TV today with
just a few alterations. But it was about a gay
(37:12):
couple and uh so I got an NC seventeen.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah. There was something called Afternoon Delight, which was a
movie about a woman who hires a giglow and it
apparently is heavy on the the woman receiving sexual gratification.
It got an R rating despite and it got an
(37:39):
OUR rating after apparently the director cut a lot of
stuff out and the director said, what the hey after
Wolfe of Wall Street came out.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Like have you seen this movie with like some very.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Graphic apparent sex scenes between a man and a woman.
But Leonardo DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most,
So it's fine. It's an R, right, blue is the
warmest color.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah. Last year that a teenage lesbian love story, and
since seventeen, yeah, got a lot of attention, and there
were some theaters that allowed high school age kids to
go see that anyway.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Because again, this isn't law, it's not binding, it's up
to the theaters.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah, it's just so strange that such a small group
of people have such influence on such a large industry.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
And yeah, the secret the more you dig into it,
the more conflicts of interest arise, and the more arbitrary
the standards become, the more blood boiling it is. I
highly recommend you go read some stuff like rated R
for ridiculous by Kirby Dick his Little uh yeah, his
little op ed about the MPAA that one US News
(38:47):
and World Report article you wrote or suggested it was good.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
I wish I wrote it.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Had you been there, would have been used correctly.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Oh did they misuse it?
Speaker 2 (38:58):
What? Yeah? I know?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Terrible. So the MPa will defend themselves and they say
that there's no such bias and that we all these
objectionable scenes are rated on the quality and how graphic
it is. But if you just look at the you'd
have to be a dummy not to see these correlations, right,
And the fact that they don't seem to care that
(39:20):
much about violence in this age where I don't know,
does it influence people to go shoot up a school?
Who knows?
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Around, Yes, but what was it?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
It's like somebody unsuccessfully tries to carry a bomb onto
a plane in their shoe. We all take our shoes off, right.
There's like thirty something school shootings after Columbine and absolutely
nothing's changed.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah. Or the onion article that's going around too now,
is this is something that can't be prevented, says the
only country where this kind of thing happens all the time,
something like that.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Huh, I'm paraphrasing, Oh yeah, that's the onion.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Yeah, good stuff, MPa. Keep keep doing the fighting, the
good fight.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah. Go check out, like, just go start reading up
on it. It's funny how much we just take this
stuff for granted, but when just start digging just slightly
beneath the surface at the very least. See this film
is not yet rated. It's really good. Yeah, really engrossing.
And you know, for every one hundred documentaries that come out,
what five of them are like really great? Sure, most
(40:30):
of them are pretty good, some are terrible. So any
really good one is worth seeing just in and of itself.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Agreed.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
If you want to learn more about the MPAA, type
those letters into the search part housetifforks dot com. And
I said, search parts, it's time for listener mail. Uh.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
I'm gonna call this wild Parrots. Josh mentioned in the
Tattoo podcast that he had heard parrots like to hang
together when free, and I wanted to burst in the
podcast booth and tell you about the wild pay of
San Francisco. I'm not going to get into it except
to say that, over the course of my life, the
parrots in San Francisco are a sort of living legend
that one would occaionally get the privilege of spotting now
(41:08):
and then. However, about three years ago, I moved in
with my aunt in the little San Francisco suburb of Brisbane,
and apparently the famous flocks of parrots were also making
their home there. Since it was warmer, unless windy, these
parrots were often hanging right outside my bedroom window, which
is pretty amazing or no, she says, amusing. I say
it's amazing, but also somewhat annoying, especially since my first
(41:33):
son was just a little guy then and a very
light sleeper. And these suckers are loud, that is true,
they are very loud. Also, guys, I'm sending you the
link to watch the preview of the two thousand and
three documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. So I
didn't know there was a documentary.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
I've heard that. Yeah, I've heard of that before. I
never knew what it was about.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Amy. I will check that out.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Thank you, thank you for writing it. Yeah, thanks a lot. Amy.
If you have a documentary recommendation, we are always interested
in those.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Heck.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, you can tweet them to us at s YSK podcast.
You can post them on Facebook. Dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know, and you can send us an email
to Stuff Podcast at houstuffworks dot com and as always,
joined us at our home on the web, the Beautiful
Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
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