Re: [dvd-discuss] clean flicks and moral rights

["Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold(at)world.std.com>]

At 2:42 PM -0500 1/23/03, Jeremy Erwin wrote:
>On Thursday, January 23, 2003, at 08:59  AM, Arnold G. Reinhold wrote:
>>
>>It's not just people with strong religious views who are potential 
>>buyers for cleaned up films. Parents are a big market. Hollywood 
>>plays  a really sick game with ratings.  Many, if not most, PG-13 
>>films are  filled with sexual content and crude humor, while R 
>>movies have  serious themes along with an occasional f-word  and 
>>542 milliseconds  of exposed nipple or crotch. Sans the gratuitous 
>>stuff thrown in to  get the magic rating, many R movies are more 
>>wholesome for teens and  even preteens than most PG-13 movies.
>>
>>Consider, for examples, "Topsy Turvey" a film about Gilbert and 
>>Sullivan with a gratuitous crotch shot,
>
>The BBFC gave Topsy-Turvy, uncut, a '12' rating (and Gosford Park a 
>'15', for that matter). Mike Leigh is a British director, and, I 
>believe the film was originally released in Britain. It sort of 
>belies  the argument that such scenes were included solely to drive 
>up the  rating. Rather, the film was imported, and the MPAA, feeling 
>prudish,  gave it an 'R'.
>

This assumes Mike Leigh had no inkling that the film would be 
released into the U.S. market, the most lucrative in the world, nor 
any knowledge of the impact MPAA ratings have on U.S. ticket sales. 
I find that hard to believe. To me a quick flash of forbidden body 
parts, enough to guarantee an R yet not enough for a financially 
ruinous NC, is a clear signature of rating manipulation. If Leigh 
really thought it was artistically necessary for the audience to see 
the debauchery that went on in 19th century Parisian brothels (the 
scene in question), he would show more than  a prostitute lifting her 
skirt for a moment.

Arnold Reinhold