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Did Showgirls kill the NC-17 rating?
“I think it hurt it, yeah. There’s a stigma associated with NC-17 and this is where you have a good point, and John Waters makes the point. He didn’t make it in the film but actually when I talked to him afterwards he said, ‘I wish you’d put this in.’ He said, ‘The studios could go out and have a campaign to say look, the NC-17, all it means is if you’re under 18 you can’t go. Nothing else. There’s no stigma associated.’ But right now it’s like there’s a stigma where it’s just a sensationalistic film. It’s not a filmmaker really trying to make a quality film and I think a lot of people are steered away from it. Even independent audiences are steered away from it. They go, ‘Oh, it’s not serious.’
I think it really hurt A Dirty Shame because I think if A Dirty Shame was rated R, it would have been treated like Team America. It’s pushing right on the edge but it’s a comedy, you can go see it. Because it was John Waters NC-17…and it was a funny film. It was a good film. It was a warm, loving John Waters film.”
When you submitted for rating, how did the raters respond to being outted?
“They weren’t happy. They’ve been operating under this secrecy for so long and it’s so important to them. They’ve been led to believe it’s so important. We talked to other ex-raters who we had personal connections with through a friend of a friend of a friend. We called and said, ‘Hi, we had such and such...’ ‘Oh, hi, how are you doing?’ ‘And we’re doing a film on the ratings.’ Click. Two sentences later it was, ‘Goodbye, I can’t talk about this.’ They are under this concept that somehow it’s so important that they not be outted that it makes no difference. MPAA says it’s to protect them from influence, but the people who really can and do influence them have contact with them, which is people in the studios. Post production supervisors, heads of production have contacts with these people. They have relationships with these people. Independents don’t have that. It’s a bogus setup, and it’s just a false sense of importance that’s been communicated to them that’s counterproductive to an effective rating process.”
What’s your proposal for a better system?
“I personally would think that it’s really important that there be an extensive list of what’s in a film so that people could make a decision on their own, children and adults really, in terms of sex, violence, drug use, thematic content. I would like to see a rating between R and NC-17 where art filmmakers can make films that aren’t stigmatized. The process should be open. That won’t hurt anybody. There should be written standards and certainly there should be some experts, child psychologists and media experts on the board. Everything they don’t want should be changed, really.”
Do you expect the general film community to care?
“So far people have really cared. We had standing ovations at Sundance. That’s one film community. Then we had a standing ovation at Comic-Con, which is another film community. I think people really care. I think people are really pissed off at the MPAA. They know that it’s a double standard. They know that it’s restricting them from seeing films that they are probably mature enough to, if they are under 18. And also they are pissed off at them for all these lawsuits over file sharing and the way that they’ve screwed around with copyright. There’s a huge amount of anger at the MPAA.”
