BoxOffice® Pro - December 2011

that holds down the economic potential of the NC-17 rating, not the
willingness of exhibitors to play the movies.
MOVIES RATED NC-17 ARE AFFORDED THE ADVERTISING
OPPORTUNITIES THEY NEED TO REACH THE CONSUMER
The second, almost perpetual myth clouding the NC-17 rating is
that media outlets won’t carry advertisements for movies so rated. The
most traditional of all advertising media, newspapers, generally have
no policies against running ads for NC-17 movies. When Fox Searchlight
released The Dreamers as an NC-17 movie in 2004, President Steve
Gilula stated publicly that they were able to place ads for the movie
almost everywhere they targeted them. A newspaper in Utah flatly
refused advertisements for NC-17 movies, but that was about all. At the
other end of the technology spectrum, the Internet offers an easy and
effective way to market movies. According to the Hollywood Reporter,
Utley says the Internet, still in its infancy when Dreamers was released,
should make a difference this time. “It will be pretty easy for us to
create noise about Shame by releasing materials online,” Utley told the
Reporter. “The communities that would support this type of movie are
much more organized than when we released Dreamers.”
So if exhibitors will play NC-17 movies where they believe they
can sell tickets, and if distributors can effectively market those
movies, why won’t more studios make and release movies with the
NC-17 rating? The most restrictive ratings in other territories do not
impede the commercial viability of the movies. Shame will receive
an 18 rating in the United Kingdom, which will similarly prevent
anyone under the age of 18 from patronizing the movie. Yet there
will be no stigma attached there because of that rating.
Perhaps American movie rating history is unique. The Motion Picture
Association of America and NATO created a rating system in 1968
that included the “X” rating for adult movies which children should
not be allowed to see. Regrettably, no copyrights were obtained for the
individual ratings and the pornography industry appropriated the use
of the “X” for their products. Then “X” became “XXX” as pornographers
destroyed the viability of the rating for commercial, artistic movies.
In 1990, the MPAA and NATO replaced the X rating with the
NC-17 category. The new designation took effect immediately and
was copyrighted so that pornographers could not use the rating.
Somehow, the industry and our patrons have never fully overcome
the misimpressions and myths surrounding the newest rating designation.
Hopefully, with more movies like Shame, we will.
I will conclude with one last concern: if studios and filmmakers
don’t make and release more NC-17 movies, the rating system may
eventually collapse on itself, opening the door back to censorship by
government. The rating system constitutes a spectrum. When one
slices a spectrum, there is always a slice at the end, and the NC-17
rating constitutes that end slice—one that requires an absolute prohibition
on attendance by children. For the system to maintain its
integrity, every category must be used. Every slice must be relevant.
Today, without confidence in the NC-17, some distributors will
trim and cut and edit their movie to cram it down into the R category.
The result, frankly, is that the R category is now too broad. In
my opinion, some “hard Rs” should be NC-17s.
I am encouraged by Fox Searchlight’s belief in their movie
Shame and wish them well. We need more serious movie-makers to
follow their lead.
DECEMBER 2011 BOXOFFICE PRO 7