This Film Is Not Yet Rated

By: Kevin Filipski

Sunday January 28, 2007

Interview with producer Eddie Schmidt.
Since its inception in 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board has been the subject of controversy.

But for all its questionable decisions-including the X ratings given to such decidedly non-pornographic films as Midnight Cowboy, A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs in the first few years of its existence-a major blow-up was when the NC-17 rating went into effect in the early '90s. Supposedly created to allow adult-themed films to avoid the stigma of the dreaded X rating, NC-17 instead spawned a movie ghetto that major newspapers and theater chains wanted to avoid. So several films either had to be recut to earn an R rating, or go out into the world an unwanted orphan named "NC-17" or "Unrated."

This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's documentary about the inner workings of the MPAA, threatened to blow the lid off the rating board's secrecy upon its release last year. Interviews with directors whose films have been affected, including Kevin Smith, John Waters, Matt Stone and Kimberly Peirce, are interspersed with an entertaining history of the board and the director's successful attempts-with the help of an enterprising private investigator-to unmask the anonymous members of the movie industry's most infamous organization.

Static Multimedia interviewed the movie's producer Eddie Schmidt upon its DVD release from Genius/IFC on a wide range of subjects, including the just-announced news that the MPAA has now decided to "reform" its process.


Kevin Filipski: First things first. Where is Kirby Dick? I hope he isn't in some sort of witness-protection program.

Eddie Schmidt: No, no....nobody's tied him up and put him in a ballgown or anything like that.

Thank God. What do you make of the MPAA's announcement that it has decided to reform its ratings process?

Now that they're heralding reforms, they're sort of sheepishly saying that a little bit of it came from our movie but they've been thinking about it before. These are largely cosmetic and superficial reforms that are directly related to the movie: they won't keep raters who have adult children, for example; our film showed that they had raters in their 50s who have kids in their 20s. So they are not owning up to the fact that the film forced these changes.

A lot of it has the do with the timing of the Sundance Festival, since they got hammered last year with the film, and Sundance is coming around again. I would imagine that they also thought that it would make the film seem like "old news" because they're changing their organization. Actually, it makes the film more powerful, because they've changed very little, not as much as they pretend. Whatever they hoped to do has brought attention to what we hoped to achieve.

How did the MPAA respond at the beginning, when you first showed the film at Sundance?

My impression was that they initially wanted to ignore it and hoped it would go away on its own. But then they saw it got a lot of support-editorials in the New York Times and L.A. Times-so they realized that they had to respond. For them to come out really hard against the film would have put them in a tougher spot, because they'd really be squelching debate-it would have reverberated even more.

Seeing (former MPAA chief) Jack Valenti's smug face onscreen made me wonder whether you tried to pursue an interview with him.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated Initially we wanted to interview Valenti, but got no response. For a long time he didn't say anything about the movie. But then in W magazine, they asked five questions, and he said that the film is childish, which I found very funny. He also wrote a rebuttal letter to the L.A. Times, which was more of the same, where he repeats the same sort of spin that he's putting on the whole process for 38 years. Since no one knew how it worked before the movie, they had to accept his spin: not any more.

I was glad to see some deleted scenes on the DVD, especially more of the interviews with Smith, Waters and Stone, who are forthcoming and endlessly talkative.

We took what we felt was the best of those interviews and packed it into what was really a great 10 minutes. For my money, the best deleted scene is when the MPAA admitted to making a copy of our film (after it was submitted for a rating). There was a big L.A. Times story when it happened, and our attorney even wrote them a letter, but they just didn't bother to respond.

Was it easy to get people to discuss their ratings-board experiences?

Not everybody wanted to talk: some studio filmmakers and even maverick independent filmmakers surprisingly were in fear of the MPAA, which says a lot. Those "no's" added gasoline to our engine to help drive the film. Everybody should be able to talk about this system without fear of retribution: there were a lot of production and post-production people who deal with the MPAA who did not want to be on camera because they didn't want to get into trouble.

The opening credit sequence is great, showing NC-17 rated scenes from movies and using black boxes to cover up certain body parts and activities. How did that come about, and was it difficult getting permission to use those sequences?

Kirby and I collaborate together through the whole process, so the whole conception (for the credit sequence) came from both of us. We both also thought of the private investigator, and our submitting the film for a rating was part of our concept from the start. The opening was originally just a mockup that we weren't keeping, but we liked it and it made sense for our film. We also worked with a terrific attorney who said that we were well within our rights under the fair-use agreement to use those film clips. And no one has contested that.

Exactly how did you decide to use a P.I.?

We knew that it would be an interesting device and provide a narrative arc for the film, but we didn't know if such an investigation would work. But Becky pulled it off, and we worked with attorneys to make sure it was completely legal, which it was. There probably were one or two P.I.'s we contacted that we didn't put in the movie, but it seemed very clear to us that Becky was the one for whom this was more than a job. The others seemed very capable, but she seemed like she had the gumption to go the extra mile, as well as being likable on camera.

How has the film business changed in the digital age, which essentially gives you two chances to "open" a film: theatrically, then its appearance on DVD?

By now, people in the business are used to it, and I'm used to it, and I read all the DVD sites and pay attention to what's coming out, so I'm excited that films have more lives to them where they can come out first as one thing, then come out later as something different stuff.

What do you see as this film's legacy?

Now that more people realize what's going on with the ratings board, the general public can help the board move more than the inch they have so far. And that will make it a better culture for everyone: filmmakers and filmgoers.