June 27, 2025 • 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
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everybody, chuck here for another summer movie playlist feed drop.
Today we're going to be covering how the MPAA works,
and this is from June twenty fourteen, and it delves
into the ins and outs of the MPAA and how
they decide on rating movies because it's sort of a
dark art as far as we're concerned.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
So check it out. Welcome to Stuff you should know
from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles W Chuck, Bryant, Jerry.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
But where's Waldough right over there?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Apparently?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Man, I wish people could hear the in between stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I think Jerry was recording that last one.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
How you doing? Not good?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
No, I don't know what's wrong with me. I am
off today? Out of your game? Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Well, I think this is the perfect podcast to set
you straight.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Why, because it's.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Something that we both have some passion about against.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
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 2 (01:33):
Yeah, and at least how they do things.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
But we're going to try to be objective.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say up front,
I have no problem with rating of 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 3 (01:56):
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 2 (02:07):
Yeah, but it gives you an idea, Like I like
having an idea what I'm about to see too.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
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 2 (02:25):
Yeah, but I think like being a film nerd, it's like,
is the New uh? Is the New Avengers movie going
to be rated? R? That really tells you something.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Right, it won't be no it never would be because.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
PG thirteen is the the that's the strike zone these.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
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 out who Steven Spielberg? Right.
(03:04):
He directed one, Indiana Jones and the Templar Doom, and
he produced another, Gremlins. Yeah, and both of them he
caught a lot of heat from both of them.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Sure, Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene specifically.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Yeah, but also the snake, the live snake at the
feast thing yeah yeah, all the snake babies, the eyeballs,
all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
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. And so 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,
(03:51):
but they apparently aren't PG movies either, so maybe we
should come up with something in between. And PG thirteen
was born.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah, and this was before he had all this way
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 3 (04:09):
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 too. 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
(04:31):
young teenage boys, who apparently are the most successful at
getting girls to go to movies with them. So if
you can get a movie rated PG thirteen, you're going
to make a bunch of money.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah. Plus it makes sense, it's right there in the middle. Yeah,
you know.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
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. Yeah. True, it's like this
is in some kids PG movie. This is as close
to an R movie as you can get.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
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 3 (05:16):
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 2 (05:34):
Yeah, and different kinds of violence that you didn't used
to see.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
You know, all right, I guess we should go back
in time a little bit. Let's is it way back machine?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Sure, let's go way back in time in Hollywood. All right,
it's nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Hollywood and Vine is a viable intersection in Hollywood at
the time. I'm 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 3 (06:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
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 MPa, he installed the Hayes
Code and said, you're either going to pass or fail.
(06:34):
It's either going to be stamped in moral or moral right.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And the reason Will Hayes, who is the MPAA president,
came up with the Hayes Code, which was really extensive. Yeah,
it was like, if you talk about the government, it
always has to be good, sexuality has to be like
repressed and just basically an hetero. How you think about
all movies from like the thirties and forties, Yeah, squeaky clean,
(07:00):
basically like the division between good and evil is very
clearly defined and the good guy always wins. And if
you 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
could pass their own obscenity laws and that could be
(07:22):
bad for business.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So is it not even get your film exhibited?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
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 Catholic said no, you can't show
that here, and the a cl went to work getting
getting the Catholics beaten in court.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Right, even though it was just a bad movie, had
something to do with well, I mean it did, but
it shouldn't have been shown because it was so terrible.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Was it bad? I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, I mean it was supposed to be not very good.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Okay, but it happened like that kind of thing happened
a lot like local local town said we're not going
to show that movie. So Hayes figured out if if
Hollyoo 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 2 (08:16):
Yeah, they work for them. Yeah, well, yeah, that's one
way to say it. But they and it's just those
six too, isn't it. Uh well, yeah, I mean you
there's definitely an argument these days that independent filmmakers have
a much rougher time with the MPAA. Yeah, but most
of the indies too, are eventually distributed by the majors.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Anyway, I got you. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Okay, So flash forward a bit in our wayback machine
to the nineteen fifties. Things changed a little bit after
World War Two, and people, I guess the easiest way
to say it is people loosened 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
(08:59):
oscar nomen for playing a heroin Addict and the Man
with a Golden Arm. And that couldn't have happened in
the nineteen forties.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
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 words and stuff in
movies goes.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, like that's not a big deal, Like World War
two is a big deal, right, get your haunches down exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, that was the big one, the big first crack
to the Hayes code. Yeah, and then there were I
think that you said he won an oscar, right. Yeah.
It was a really good movie that kind of opened
the floodgate so that by the end of the fifties
you got some like it. Hot Tony Curtis and Jack
lemon are dressed like women hitting on Marilyn Monroe. Yeah,
and at that point it was pretty obvious the Hayes
(09:47):
code was dead. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I mean, they weren't passing the code, but they were
still getting released. So once something is subverted like that,
it's it's dead in.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
The water, right, So there was a that was fine
for a little while. I think the Hayes coach 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, so it's kind of a limbo period until
nineteen sixty eight and a store owner in New York
(10:19):
with the last name of Ginsburg got busted for selling
nudimags 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 upsnity, not
local laws. And the Supreme Court said, you know what,
we really think it's up to local municipalities to decide
what they want their miners exposed to or not. That
(10:43):
got Hollywood's attention because all of a sudden, local municipalities
could decide whether or not they wanted to show movies
to miners 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 self knowther self policing system,
and he came up with the rating system that we
(11:04):
have today.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
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 MPA's rating
system were.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Art centered, 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
(11:47):
appropriate for minors or not, what movie is, and we'll
just make a simple rating system. Yeah, gpg R or
X the old X yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And triple X. It wasn't even formally a rating, it
was just.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
A marketing tool.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah. Yeah, because three x'es that's like WHOA.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I wonder if anybody ever came out with one with
four X.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah or double X even yeah, like we cut out
that one part so ta X uh. Yeah. Christian our
colleague here wrote a great blog post about the former
X rated movie.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Is that right? Yeah, we'll have to check that out.
It's good for brain stuff for stuff of genius.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
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 3 (12:36):
Yeah, I remember recommending one of his things. I just
don't remember that one. It's good.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
I thought about asking him in here, but then I thought, yeah,
we got it N 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 rated movies? Now
we have something. I guess we should just go through
(13:01):
what these ratings mean today in twenty fourteen. Okay, so
you've got your G.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
G's always been G general audience.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Anyone can see it, Yes, and that's your your family
cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Then you've got PG that means no drug use, maybe
a little violence, because as we'll learn, the MPa has
less problems with violence and more problems with language and sex.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Huge criticism, huge criticism.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
PG thirteen, which we've you know, kind of been through.
Then you've got your R and that is no one
under seven. This is a suggestion that no one over
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 3 (13:51):
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 recommendation. And 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. And
(14:12):
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. 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, there's basically no theater
(14:35):
chain out there right now, no major theater chain out
there right now that will show an unrated movie.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film
to the MPa ratings board.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
But it's de facto.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
But you have to do it. Yeah, that's the 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 3 (14:59):
Right, 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 2 (15:13):
Yeah, well there's only one more, and that's NC seventeen,
which replaced X. And that means this is in nineteen
ninety and that basically means that it's for adults only
and you should not come in if you're under eighteen.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
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, not
to be confused with Benny and June. And it basically
sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh, this is
(15:49):
X now, right, NC seventeen. If you jumble it all together,
it looks like X. And the whole reason they came
out with NC seventyeen was to replace X because X
was associated exclusively with pornography in the minds of moviegoers.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah exactly, Yeah, all right, so let's get into this.
The actual ratings board. There's the MPAA, and then working
for the MPa 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,
(16:27):
and they are overseen by 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 3 (16:47):
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 2 (16:56):
Totally subjective. They supposedly. Here's the other rub is it's
all secret.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
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 the
stuff is released and That's one of the big rubs
in that documentary and with filmmakers in general, is it's all,
you know, done behind closed doors. There's never any explanations provided.
(17:23):
These people are supposed to have kids between ages of
five and seventeen, but many of them do not, right,
either have kids at all or have kids that are
older than eighteen.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It basically frees them up from any accountability. Yeah, to
do this all in private and in secrecy.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
And until that movie by Kirby what is Kirby's last name?
Henry and June No no, the documentary.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Oh oh yeah, this film is not yet rated.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yeah, until Kirby Dick's this film is not yet rated
came out, Like all of this stuff was just conjection
and conjecture in Hollywood legend. He was the first one
to really basically he tailed these people, tailed them to
lunch to find out who they were and eavesdrop on
them and like did some digging and found like these
(18:14):
anonymous people did not fall into the requirements that the
NPAA 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 of people, this anonymous group of people, watch it,
(18:36):
they rate it, then they come together and vote on
a rating, and then they passed their their vote along
to a senior raider. Yeah, 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 a choice. You can accept the rating. You can
(18:58):
edit your film as per the CI's recommendations.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Take out these bad words, cut the sex scene a
little early, leave all the violence.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yeah. Or you can reject the rating and just release
your movie is unrated.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, which, well, you can try to release it, but
since no one will show it, it's really sort of
a misnomer.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Right, but it's becoming increasingly a thing again. You need
the rating to get your movie shown in movie theaters. Yeah,
But what happens if you don't care if your movie
comes out in theaters, video on demand, yeah, or just
releasing it to the internet.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Now, I'm curious about that. How that's going to change
the landscape.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
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 2 (19:47):
And if for theaters yes, If no one's going to theaters.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Then the MPAA loses all of 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
(20:14):
I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way,
and their trunk is flailing and they're honking. That is true.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
One thing I should point out is I said, is
that there's no accountability.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
That's what the NPA says.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
It's the good thing about the secrecy is that it
frees them up. That anonymity does. It frees them up
from accountability.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
I just don't agree, right, Okay, So the 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.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Well you never want that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Right, And when you were appear you couldn't reference any
other film. It was totally done in a vacuum, which
is pretty preposterous.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
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 3 (21:15):
Right, Which meant that there was no real standard, yeah,
that you could point to, or there were standards you
could point to, they just wouldn't be considered.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
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 3 (21:28):
Right. So the MPAA is, they've got their rating system,
they've got the appeals process.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
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 3 (21:51):
Right, and the Theater Owners Association exactly, whereas the people
who were raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the movie indust
and are just like average ordinary.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Parents representing EU Middle America. We'll just call it, even
though I think that's insulting.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
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
(22:32):
addition to rating, they are, like we said, the lobby
are for these six studios.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
That's right, and they I guess we should talk about
piracy now, Huh. That's one of their other big besides
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, Like it's the futre. It's not the future,
(23:01):
it's the present and the future.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
And the NPAA has a they're accused of basically trying
to quell new technology by just saying like, well, let's
just keep people from peer to peer file sharing in
total so that they can't steal movies. In part, and
if you go back to the early eighties, Jack Valente
(23:24):
was known to have railed and lobbied against the legality
of VCRs.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
People are just gonna be recording things and handing them
out to their friends exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
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 the studios that are not
(23:56):
part of these six that they represent, but whose movies
they still rate. Right, so they've been accused of more
scrupulously or scrutinously rating the movies of rival studios or
foreign studios when assigning a rating.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Well, and that's why filmmakers call consistently for transparency. I
don't think there are many filmmakers out there saying there
should be no rating, we should just maybe some like
a large fontrier, you know, or Werner Herzog. They're probably
like nota eight things at all. But I think they
just want transparency, like open it up and let everyone
(24:35):
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 3 (24:45):
So you were talking about online piracy, and with digital
distribution being a big deal now, the NPAs 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, right, but it needs its power more
(25:06):
than ever. So, like we said, it's a precarious time
for the MPAA. Yeah, 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
Copyright Act, oh right, which basically that up until then
(25:27):
it wasn't a federal 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 2 (25:37):
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 3 (25:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
And yeah, it's uh, I've never seen one, but I
think they're terrible.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
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
(26:32):
movies that are up for awards. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I think now they have, thanks to the NPA, have
something coded to your name now on your copy.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
So like they'll know who leaked it or whatever. I think. So, yeah,
I'm 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. Yeah, that surprised me.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
But there are a lot of especially in the summertime,
a lot of community screenings, like every city now has uh,
you know, Atlanta shows them and uh, 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 3 (27:21):
Yeah, the big ones, I'm sure do.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
But like at your community pool and you want to
show et and.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
The FED could kick the gate down around the pool.
I bet everybody.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
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? Oh right, yeah, and HBO came
out and they're like, who cares?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yeah, people are watching it, yeah, like go watch True Detective.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
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 3 (27:58):
Yes, And that's some thing that a lot of people say,
you know, film industry, we don't really feel that bad
for you, Yeah, Sean 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 2 (28:21):
What's Shawn aston Steel he was voices or yeah, yeah,
oh okay, Yeah, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
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 he was the face of it,
part of it. Yeah, yeah, and he looked really mad
about things too. Du 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 whah,
(28:48):
But then if if you really kind of lended some thought,
it's really disturbing. Yeah, there were there was a report
of prisoners at a prison being shown pirated movies and
some of the prisoners were there for pirting movies. Oh wow,
and like really think about the injustice behind that. Yeah,
(29:12):
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 2 (29:23):
It'd be pretty swing in prison.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
It'd be weird, but it would also be unjust.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Yeah, true. 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 2 (29:38):
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 3 (29:56):
It does zero good? Yeah, And speaking of doing zero good,
there's kind of a new attachment to the rating system
that they have now. It's called check the box, and
it's basically a brief description of why a movie is,
like PG. Thirteen, So it'll say like intense sci fi
(30:18):
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. And
(30:40):
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 MPAA is accused of not regulating or even
potentially directly marketing to kids under the age of the
movie that are being advertised. Yeah, so like you're seeing
(31:03):
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 MPAA is supposedly serving America's moral compasses. Yeah,
(31:29):
but really, at the same time, they're undermining that morality
that they're supposedly defending. Yeah, by marketing and exploiting kids.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, that'd be like a cigarette company having a cartoon
animal as their mascot.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Be weird? Well, one thing about the the subjectivity of
it and the fact that it is a closed book
and they filmmakers don't even know, you know what, 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 watch that film is not yet rated. And
(32:08):
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, So they're subverting the system because
(32:30):
there is no set standard.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, and they're just the stuff they want to keep
in is comparatively exactly more palatable.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
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. Well, they
have group discussions too, man, I'd love to sit in
on those.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
So the I read Another criticism of NPAA 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
(33:20):
it comes to bad words or sexuality of almost any
nature except for women being objectified and men being gratified,
then the NPAA suddenly puckers up.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Well, yeah, in any a woman achieving receiving sexual gratification,
or a homosexual couple NC seventeen.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Yeah, virtually like guaranteed or depending on how they do it,
are if it's coming out of like one of the
major studios.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
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. But
if a woman does like you said, or if it's
a gay couple, it's all over so homophobic, misogynistic.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
You decide right, and fetishistic of violence, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
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, and it's basically Chris Dodd, who's the
new head and the gang, digging in and saying, you
know what, we talk to your average parents and we
pull them and this is what they want. But they
(34:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah. It was about a lady looking for a long
lost sun. It was so far from an R movie.
It was ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
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 3 (35:09):
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. No.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I would say it was a bittersweet, just a modern
day romance told through music.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
It wasn't a musical, but there are a lot of
musical numbers.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Highly inoffensive love story. Yeah, very sweet movie. It had
the same rating as a hostile too, which is basically
torture porn. They both got the same rating.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
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 feature to scene where
a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling while another
naked woman slashes her with a scyth and baths in
Her Blood. The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together,
falling in love and opting not to act on it.
(36:16):
Like there was never any sex scene. They didn't even
get together. Really.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Nope.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
They're both rated R.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Both rated are because of profanity.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
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 these it shows these little kids like looking at
those like a twelve year.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Old would probably do. And it got an R for that,
got an R for that. Happiness Todd Sollins 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 who can just
go take a long walk off a short peer is
(37:05):
what I think he famously said to them. Yeah, and
he released his movie as unrated. Oh really, yep, I
don't think I knew that way to go.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Todd Solins, 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 AB Club says it could show on network TV
today with just a few alterations. But it was about
(37:34):
a gay couple, and uh so I got an NC seventeen.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah. There's something called Afternoon Delight, which was a movie
about a woman who hires a jigalow. Yeah, and it
apparently is heavy on the the woman receiving sexual gratification.
It got an R rating. Yeah, bite, and it got
(38:01):
in our rating after apparently the director cut a lot
of stuff out and the director said, what the hey,
after Wolf of Wall Street came out, Like, have you
seen this movie with like some very graphic apparent sex
scenes between a man and a woman. Yeah, but Leonardo
DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most, So it's fine.
(38:21):
It's an R right. Blue is the warmest color. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Last year that a teenage lesbian love story n S seventeen.
Yeap got a lot of attention, and there were some
theaters that allowed high school age kids to go see
that anyway.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Because again, this is in law, it's not binding it's
up to the theaters.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah, it's just so strange that such a small group
of people have such influence on such a large industry.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
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 Are
for Ridiculous by Kirby Dick his little uh yeah, his
little op ed about the MPAA that one US News
(39:09):
and World Report article you wrote or suggested it was good.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I wish I wrote it.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
Had you been there, would have been used correctly.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Oh did they misuse it? What?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I know, and that's terrible. Uh So the NPA will
defend themselves and they say that there's no such bias
and that we all these objectionable scenes are rated on
the graphic 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
(39:41):
that they don't seem to care that much about violence
in this age where I don't know, does it influence
people to go shoot up a school? Who knows?
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going around, Yes,
but what was it? It's like somebody on successfully tries
to carry a bomb onto a plane in their shoe.
We all take our shoes off. Oh right, there's like
thirty somethings school shootings after Columbine and absolutely nothing's changed.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
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. Huh I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Oh yeah, that's the onion.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yeah, good stuff, MPa, keep doing the fighting, the good fight.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
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
(40:52):
of them are pretty good, some are terrible. So any
really good one is worth seeing just in and of itself.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Agreed.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
You want to learn more about the MPAA. Type those
letters into the search housetifforks dot com and I said,
search pars. It's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
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 parrots 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
(41:31):
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
(41:56):
son was just a little guy then and a very
light sleeper, and these suckers are allowed, That's 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 that was a documentary.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
I've heard that, Yeah, I've heard of that before. I
never knew what it was about. Amy.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I will check that out.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Thank you, thank you for writing it. Yeah, thanks a lot, Amy.
If you have a documentary recommendation, we are always interested
in those. Heck yeah, you can tweet them to us
at SYSK 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 HowStuffWorks dot com and
(42:35):
as always, joined us at our home on the web,
the Beautiful stuff youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Hey, everybody, chuck here for another summer movie playlist feed drop.
Today we're going to be covering how the MPAA works,
and this is from June twenty fourteen, and it delves
into the ins and outs of the MPAA and how
they decide on rating movies because it's sort of a
dark art as far as we're concerned.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
So check it out. Welcome to Stuff you should know
from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles W Chuck, Bryant, Jerry.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
But where's Waldough right over there?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Apparently?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Man, I wish people could hear the in between stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I think Jerry was recording that last one.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
How you doing? Not good?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
No?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
No, I don't know what's wrong with me. I am
off today? Out of your game? Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Well, I think this is the perfect podcast to set
you straight.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Why, because it's.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Something that we both have some passion about against.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
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 2 (01:33):
Yeah, and at least how they do things.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
But we're going to try to be objective.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say up front,
I have no problem with rating of 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 3 (01:56):
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 2 (02:07):
Yeah, but it gives you an idea, Like I like
having an idea what I'm about to see too.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
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 2 (02:25):
Yeah, but I think like being a film nerd, it's like,
is the New uh? Is the New Avengers movie going
to be rated? R? That really tells you something.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Right, it won't be no it never would be because.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
PG thirteen is the the that's the strike zone these.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
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 out who Steven Spielberg? Right.
(03:04):
He directed one, Indiana Jones and the Templar Doom, and
he produced another, Gremlins. Yeah, and both of them he
caught a lot of heat from both of them.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Sure, Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene specifically.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Yeah, but also the snake, the live snake at the
feast thing yeah yeah, all the snake babies, the eyeballs,
all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
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. And so 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,
(03:51):
but they apparently aren't PG movies either, so maybe we
should come up with something in between. And PG thirteen
was born.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah, and this was before he had all this way
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 3 (04:09):
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 too. 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
(04:31):
young teenage boys, who apparently are the most successful at
getting girls to go to movies with them. So if
you can get a movie rated PG thirteen, you're going
to make a bunch of money.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah. Plus it makes sense, it's right there in the middle. Yeah,
you know.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
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. Yeah. True, it's like this
is in some kids PG movie. This is as close
to an R movie as you can get.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
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 3 (05:16):
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 2 (05:34):
Yeah, and different kinds of violence that you didn't used
to see.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
You know, all right, I guess we should go back
in time a little bit. Let's is it way back machine?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Sure, let's go way back in time in Hollywood. All right,
it's nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Hollywood and Vine is a viable intersection in Hollywood at
the time. I'm 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 3 (06:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
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 MPa, he installed the Hayes
Code and said, you're either going to pass or fail.
(06:34):
It's either going to be stamped in moral or moral right.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And the reason Will Hayes, who is the MPAA president,
came up with the Hayes Code, which was really extensive. Yeah,
it was like, if you talk about the government, it
always has to be good, sexuality has to be like
repressed and just basically an hetero. How you think about
all movies from like the thirties and forties, Yeah, squeaky clean,
(07:00):
basically like the division between good and evil is very
clearly defined and the good guy always wins. And if
you 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
could pass their own obscenity laws and that could be
(07:22):
bad for business.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So is it not even get your film exhibited?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
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 Catholic said no, you can't show
that here, and the a cl went to work getting
getting the Catholics beaten in court.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Right, even though it was just a bad movie, had
something to do with well, I mean it did, but
it shouldn't have been shown because it was so terrible.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Was it bad? I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, I mean it was supposed to be not very good.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Okay, but it happened like that kind of thing happened
a lot like local local town said we're not going
to show that movie. So Hayes figured out if if
Hollyoo 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 2 (08:16):
Yeah, they work for them. Yeah, well, yeah, that's one
way to say it. But they and it's just those
six too, isn't it. Uh well, yeah, I mean you
there's definitely an argument these days that independent filmmakers have
a much rougher time with the MPAA. Yeah, but most
of the indies too, are eventually distributed by the majors.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Anyway, I got you. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Okay, So flash forward a bit in our wayback machine
to the nineteen fifties. Things changed a little bit after
World War Two, and people, I guess the easiest way
to say it is people loosened 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
(08:59):
oscar nomen for playing a heroin Addict and the Man
with a Golden Arm. And that couldn't have happened in
the nineteen forties.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
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 words and stuff in
movies goes.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, like that's not a big deal, Like World War
two is a big deal, right, get your haunches down exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, that was the big one, the big first crack
to the Hayes code. Yeah, and then there were I
think that you said he won an oscar, right. Yeah.
It was a really good movie that kind of opened
the floodgate so that by the end of the fifties
you got some like it. Hot Tony Curtis and Jack
lemon are dressed like women hitting on Marilyn Monroe. Yeah,
and at that point it was pretty obvious the Hayes
(09:47):
code was dead. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I mean, they weren't passing the code, but they were
still getting released. So once something is subverted like that,
it's it's dead in.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
The water, right, So there was a that was fine
for a little while. I think the Hayes coach 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, so it's kind of a limbo period until
nineteen sixty eight and a store owner in New York
(10:19):
with the last name of Ginsburg got busted for selling
nudimags 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 upsnity, not
local laws. And the Supreme Court said, you know what,
we really think it's up to local municipalities to decide
what they want their miners exposed to or not. That
(10:43):
got Hollywood's attention because all of a sudden, local municipalities
could decide whether or not they wanted to show movies
to miners 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 self knowther self policing system,
and he came up with the rating system that we
(11:04):
have today.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
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 MPA's rating
system were.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Art centered, 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
(11:47):
appropriate for minors or not, what movie is, and we'll
just make a simple rating system. Yeah, gpg R or
X the old X yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And triple X. It wasn't even formally a rating, it
was just.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
A marketing tool.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah. Yeah, because three x'es that's like WHOA.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I wonder if anybody ever came out with one with
four X.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah or double X even yeah, like we cut out
that one part so ta X uh. Yeah. Christian our
colleague here wrote a great blog post about the former
X rated movie.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Is that right? Yeah, we'll have to check that out.
It's good for brain stuff for stuff of genius.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
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 3 (12:36):
Yeah, I remember recommending one of his things. I just
don't remember that one. It's good.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
I thought about asking him in here, but then I thought, yeah,
we got it N 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 rated movies? Now
we have something. I guess we should just go through
(13:01):
what these ratings mean today in twenty fourteen. Okay, so
you've got your G.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
G's always been G general audience.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Anyone can see it, Yes, and that's your your family
cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Then you've got PG that means no drug use, maybe
a little violence, because as we'll learn, the MPa has
less problems with violence and more problems with language and sex.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Huge criticism, huge criticism.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
PG thirteen, which we've you know, kind of been through.
Then you've got your R and that is no one
under seven. This is a suggestion that no one over
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 3 (13:51):
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 recommendation. And 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. And
(14:12):
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. 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, there's basically no theater
(14:35):
chain out there right now, no major theater chain out
there right now that will show an unrated movie.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film
to the MPa ratings board.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
But it's de facto.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
But you have to do it. Yeah, that's the 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 3 (14:59):
Right, 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 2 (15:13):
Yeah, well there's only one more, and that's NC seventeen,
which replaced X. And that means this is in nineteen
ninety and that basically means that it's for adults only
and you should not come in if you're under eighteen.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
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, not
to be confused with Benny and June. And it basically
sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh, this is
(15:49):
X now, right, NC seventeen. If you jumble it all together,
it looks like X. And the whole reason they came
out with NC seventyeen was to replace X because X
was associated exclusively with pornography in the minds of moviegoers.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah exactly, Yeah, all right, so let's get into this.
The actual ratings board. There's the MPAA, and then working
for the MPa 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,
(16:27):
and they are overseen by 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 3 (16:47):
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 2 (16:56):
Totally subjective. They supposedly. Here's the other rub is it's
all secret.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
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 the
stuff is released and That's one of the big rubs
in that documentary and with filmmakers in general, is it's all,
you know, done behind closed doors. There's never any explanations provided.
(17:23):
These people are supposed to have kids between ages of
five and seventeen, but many of them do not, right,
either have kids at all or have kids that are
older than eighteen.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It basically frees them up from any accountability. Yeah, to
do this all in private and in secrecy.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
And until that movie by Kirby what is Kirby's last name?
Henry and June No no, the documentary.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Oh oh yeah, this film is not yet rated.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yeah, until Kirby Dick's this film is not yet rated
came out, Like all of this stuff was just conjection
and conjecture in Hollywood legend. He was the first one
to really basically he tailed these people, tailed them to
lunch to find out who they were and eavesdrop on
them and like did some digging and found like these
(18:14):
anonymous people did not fall into the requirements that the
NPAA 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 of people, this anonymous group of people, watch it,
(18:36):
they rate it, then they come together and vote on
a rating, and then they passed their their vote along
to a senior raider. Yeah, 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 a choice. You can accept the rating. You can
(18:58):
edit your film as per the CI's recommendations.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Take out these bad words, cut the sex scene a
little early, leave all the violence.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yeah. Or you can reject the rating and just release
your movie is unrated.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, which, well, you can try to release it, but
since no one will show it, it's really sort of
a misnomer.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Right, but it's becoming increasingly a thing again. You need
the rating to get your movie shown in movie theaters. Yeah,
But what happens if you don't care if your movie
comes out in theaters, video on demand, yeah, or just
releasing it to the internet.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Now, I'm curious about that. How that's going to change
the landscape.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
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 2 (19:47):
And if for theaters yes, If no one's going to theaters.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Then the MPAA loses all of 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
(20:14):
I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way,
and their trunk is flailing and they're honking. That is true.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
One thing I should point out is I said, is
that there's no accountability.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
That's what the NPA says.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
It's the good thing about the secrecy is that it
frees them up. That anonymity does. It frees them up
from accountability.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
I just don't agree, right, Okay, So the 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.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Well you never want that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Right, And when you were appear you couldn't reference any
other film. It was totally done in a vacuum, which
is pretty preposterous.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
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 3 (21:15):
Right, Which meant that there was no real standard, yeah,
that you could point to, or there were standards you
could point to, they just wouldn't be considered.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
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 3 (21:28):
Right. So the MPAA is, they've got their rating system,
they've got the appeals process.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
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 3 (21:51):
Right, and the Theater Owners Association exactly, whereas the people
who were raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the movie indust
and are just like average ordinary.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Parents representing EU Middle America. We'll just call it, even
though I think that's insulting.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
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
(22:32):
addition to rating, they are, like we said, the lobby
are for these six studios.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
That's right, and they I guess we should talk about
piracy now, Huh. That's one of their other big besides
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, Like it's the futre. It's not the future,
(23:01):
it's the present and the future.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
And the NPAA has a they're accused of basically trying
to quell new technology by just saying like, well, let's
just keep people from peer to peer file sharing in
total so that they can't steal movies. In part, and
if you go back to the early eighties, Jack Valente
(23:24):
was known to have railed and lobbied against the legality
of VCRs.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
People are just gonna be recording things and handing them
out to their friends exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
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 the studios that are not
(23:56):
part of these six that they represent, but whose movies
they still rate. Right, so they've been accused of more
scrupulously or scrutinously rating the movies of rival studios or
foreign studios when assigning a rating.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Well, and that's why filmmakers call consistently for transparency. I
don't think there are many filmmakers out there saying there
should be no rating, we should just maybe some like
a large fontrier, you know, or Werner Herzog. They're probably
like nota eight things at all. But I think they
just want transparency, like open it up and let everyone
(24:35):
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 3 (24:45):
So you were talking about online piracy, and with digital
distribution being a big deal now, the NPAs 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, right, but it needs its power more
(25:06):
than ever. So, like we said, it's a precarious time
for the MPAA. Yeah, 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
Copyright Act, oh right, which basically that up until then
(25:27):
it wasn't a federal 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 2 (25:37):
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 3 (25:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
And yeah, it's uh, I've never seen one, but I
think they're terrible.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
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
(26:32):
movies that are up for awards. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I think now they have, thanks to the NPA, have
something coded to your name now on your copy.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
So like they'll know who leaked it or whatever. I think. So, yeah,
I'm 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. Yeah, that surprised me.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
But there are a lot of especially in the summertime,
a lot of community screenings, like every city now has uh,
you know, Atlanta shows them and uh, 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 3 (27:21):
Yeah, the big ones, I'm sure do.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
But like at your community pool and you want to
show et and.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
The FED could kick the gate down around the pool.
I bet everybody.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
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? Oh right, yeah, and HBO came
out and they're like, who cares?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yeah, people are watching it, yeah, like go watch True Detective.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
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 3 (27:58):
Yes, And that's some thing that a lot of people say,
you know, film industry, we don't really feel that bad
for you, Yeah, Sean 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 2 (28:21):
What's Shawn aston Steel he was voices or yeah, yeah,
oh okay, Yeah, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
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 he was the face of it,
part of it. Yeah, yeah, and he looked really mad
about things too. Du 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 whah,
(28:48):
But then if if you really kind of lended some thought,
it's really disturbing. Yeah, there were there was a report
of prisoners at a prison being shown pirated movies and
some of the prisoners were there for pirting movies. Oh wow,
and like really think about the injustice behind that. Yeah,
(29:12):
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 2 (29:23):
It'd be pretty swing in prison.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
It'd be weird, but it would also be unjust.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Yeah, true. 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 2 (29:38):
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 3 (29:56):
It does zero good? Yeah, And speaking of doing zero good,
there's kind of a new attachment to the rating system
that they have now. It's called check the box, and
it's basically a brief description of why a movie is,
like PG. Thirteen, So it'll say like intense sci fi
(30:18):
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. And
(30:40):
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 MPAA is accused of not regulating or even
potentially directly marketing to kids under the age of the
movie that are being advertised. Yeah, so like you're seeing
(31:03):
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 MPAA is supposedly serving America's moral compasses. Yeah,
(31:29):
but really, at the same time, they're undermining that morality
that they're supposedly defending. Yeah, by marketing and exploiting kids.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, that'd be like a cigarette company having a cartoon
animal as their mascot.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Be weird? Well, one thing about the the subjectivity of
it and the fact that it is a closed book
and they filmmakers don't even know, you know what, 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 watch that film is not yet rated. And
(32:08):
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, So they're subverting the system because
(32:30):
there is no set standard.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, and they're just the stuff they want to keep
in is comparatively exactly more palatable.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
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. Well, they
have group discussions too, man, I'd love to sit in
on those.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
So the I read Another criticism of NPAA 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
(33:20):
it comes to bad words or sexuality of almost any
nature except for women being objectified and men being gratified,
then the NPAA suddenly puckers up.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Well, yeah, in any a woman achieving receiving sexual gratification,
or a homosexual couple NC seventeen.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Yeah, virtually like guaranteed or depending on how they do it,
are if it's coming out of like one of the
major studios.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
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. But
if a woman does like you said, or if it's
a gay couple, it's all over so homophobic, misogynistic.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
You decide right, and fetishistic of violence, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
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, and it's basically Chris Dodd, who's the
new head and the gang, digging in and saying, you
know what, we talk to your average parents and we
pull them and this is what they want. But they
(34:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
Yeah. It was about a lady looking for a long
lost sun. It was so far from an R movie.
It was ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
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 3 (35:09):
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. No.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I would say it was a bittersweet, just a modern
day romance told through music.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
It wasn't a musical, but there are a lot of
musical numbers.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Highly inoffensive love story. Yeah, very sweet movie. It had
the same rating as a hostile too, which is basically
torture porn. They both got the same rating.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
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 feature to scene where
a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling while another
naked woman slashes her with a scyth and baths in
Her Blood. The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together,
falling in love and opting not to act on it.
(36:16):
Like there was never any sex scene. They didn't even
get together. Really.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Nope.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
They're both rated R.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Both rated are because of profanity.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
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 these it shows these little kids like looking at
those like a twelve year.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Old would probably do. And it got an R for that,
got an R for that. Happiness Todd Sollins 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 who can just
go take a long walk off a short peer is
(37:05):
what I think he famously said to them. Yeah, and
he released his movie as unrated. Oh really, yep, I
don't think I knew that way to go.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Todd Solins, 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 AB Club says it could show on network TV
today with just a few alterations. But it was about
(37:34):
a gay couple, and uh so I got an NC seventeen.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah. There's something called Afternoon Delight, which was a movie
about a woman who hires a jigalow. Yeah, and it
apparently is heavy on the the woman receiving sexual gratification.
It got an R rating. Yeah, bite, and it got
(38:01):
in our rating after apparently the director cut a lot
of stuff out and the director said, what the hey,
after Wolf of Wall Street came out, Like, have you
seen this movie with like some very graphic apparent sex
scenes between a man and a woman. Yeah, but Leonardo
DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most, So it's fine.
(38:21):
It's an R right. Blue is the warmest color. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Last year that a teenage lesbian love story n S seventeen.
Yeap got a lot of attention, and there were some
theaters that allowed high school age kids to go see
that anyway.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Because again, this is in law, it's not binding it's
up to the theaters.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah, it's just so strange that such a small group
of people have such influence on such a large industry.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
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 Are
for Ridiculous by Kirby Dick his little uh yeah, his
little op ed about the MPAA that one US News
(39:09):
and World Report article you wrote or suggested it was good.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I wish I wrote it.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
Had you been there, would have been used correctly.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Oh did they misuse it? What?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I know, and that's terrible. Uh So the NPA will
defend themselves and they say that there's no such bias
and that we all these objectionable scenes are rated on
the graphic 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
(39:41):
that they don't seem to care that much about violence
in this age where I don't know, does it influence
people to go shoot up a school? Who knows?
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going around, Yes,
but what was it? It's like somebody on successfully tries
to carry a bomb onto a plane in their shoe.
We all take our shoes off. Oh right, there's like
thirty somethings school shootings after Columbine and absolutely nothing's changed.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
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. Huh I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Oh yeah, that's the onion.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Yeah, good stuff, MPa, keep doing the fighting, the good fight.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
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
(40:52):
of them are pretty good, some are terrible. So any
really good one is worth seeing just in and of itself.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Agreed.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
You want to learn more about the MPAA. Type those
letters into the search housetifforks dot com and I said,
search pars. It's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
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 parrots 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
(41:31):
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
(41:56):
son was just a little guy then and a very
light sleeper, and these suckers are allowed, That's 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 that was a documentary.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
I've heard that, Yeah, I've heard of that before. I
never knew what it was about. Amy.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I will check that out.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Thank you, thank you for writing it. Yeah, thanks a lot, Amy.
If you have a documentary recommendation, we are always interested
in those. Heck yeah, you can tweet them to us
at SYSK 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 HowStuffWorks dot com and
(42:35):
as always, joined us at our home on the web,
the Beautiful stuff youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
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