Stuff You Should Know - How the MPAA Works

Episode Date: June 26, 2014

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry.

But where's Wal though? I, right over there, apparently. Man, I wish people could hear the in-between stuff. I think Jerry was recording that last one. Oh yeah? I think so. She used to give us neat little outtakes, but she doesn't do that anymore.

No. Those days are long gone. They exist in the vault though. How you doing? Not good. No? No. I don't know what's wrong with me.

I am off today. Out of your game? Yeah, it's weird. Well, I think this is the perfect podcast to set you straight. Why? Because it's something that we both have some passion about against.

Yeah. I think anybody who's seen the documentary, this film, is not yet rated, that would be very difficult to not be persuaded to feel strongly about the MPAA and its practices. Yeah, and at least how they do things. But we're going to try to be objective. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say up front,

there's a problem with rating a 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 MPAA does. Yes. So I just wanted to float that early on. OK.

I think that was probably smart. OK. OK. I don't have kids, so I don't really, whatever. But I mean, I can understand the value of that kind of thing. Yeah, but it gives you an idea. Like, I like having an idea of what I'm about to see, too. I feel like I can tell just from watching a trailer,

a preview, seeing a movie poster. I'm pretty intuitive when it comes to the marketing techniques of movies. Yeah, but I think being a film nerd, is the new Avengers movie going to be rated R that really tells you something, because it won't be. No, it never would be. Because PG-13 is the strike zone these days.

It really is. Apparently, PG-13 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 1984, a man named Steven Spielberg

had two movies out. Who? Steven Spielberg. Right. He directed one, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And he produced another, Gremlins. And both of them, he caught a lot of heat from both of them. Sure.

Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene, specifically. Yeah, but also the live snake at the feast thing. Yeah, yeah. All the snake babies, the eyeballs, all that stuff. 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 MPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America, and said, oh, let's do something about this. Because these clearly aren't our movies. Yeah. But they apparently aren't PG movies either. So maybe we should come up with something in between.

And PG-13 was born. Yeah, and this was before he had all the sway in the world. He was influential, but it wasn't like Spielberg today who could have just waved his wand and made it happen. Yeah, but I think even at the time. He was important. Yeah, there were very few directors at that time

who could have gotten something like that done, too. But so that's where PG-13 came from. And like you said, that's the strike zone now. And the reason why is because that is the kind of movie that caters to 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-13,

you're going to make a bunch of money. Yeah, plus it makes sense. It's right there in the middle. Yeah, you know. But the problem 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 in some kids' PG movie. This is as close to an R movie as you can get 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. Or adding more violence, because apparently PG-13 movies have tripled in violence over the last few decades. And they now have, according to one study,

more violence than their R rated counterparts. Yeah, and different kinds of violence that you didn't used to see. Yeah. All right, I guess we should go back in time a little bit. Let's. Is it way back machine? Sure.

Let's go way back in time in Hollywood. All right, it's 1922, Hollywood and Vine is a viable intersection in Hollywood at the time, 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 1920s. Yeah.

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 NPA, he installed the Hayes code and said, you're either going to pass or fail.

It's either going to be stamped immoral or moral. Right, and the reason Will Hayes, who was the NPA president, came up with the Hayes code, which was really extensive. It was like, if you talk about the government, it always has to be good. Sexuality has to be repressed. And just basically how you think about all movies from the 30s and 40s, squeaky clean, 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 bad for business.

As in not even get your film exhibited? Right. Remember in the ACLU episode, where we're talking about that one movie, that New York. Just the Catholic said, no, you can't show that here. And the ACLU went to work getting the Catholics beaten in court. Right, even though it was just a bad movie.

And nothing to do with it. Well, I mean, it did. But it shouldn't have been shown because it was so terrible. Was it bad? I don't remember. Yeah, I mean, it was supposed to be not very good. But it happened. Like that kind of thing happened a lot.

Like local towns said, no, we're not going to show that movie. So Hayes figured out, if Hollywood police itself, then they could control what movies came out. And therefore, everybody can make a bunch of money. That's right. And that's the point of the MPAA. They're the lobbying arm of six major Hollywood studios. Yeah.

They work for them. Yeah, well, yeah, that's one way to say it. And it's just those six, too, isn't it? Well, yeah, I mean, there's definitely an argument these days that independent filmmakers have a much rougher time with the MPAA. But most of the indies, too, are eventually distributed by the majors anyway.

I got you. You know what I'm saying? OK. So flash forward a bit in our wayback machine to the 1950s. Things changed a little bit after World War II. 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 of this article uses Frank Sinatra. Got an Oscar nomination for playing a heroin addict. And the man with a golden arm. And that couldn't have happened in the 1940s. No, millions of people hadn't died in World War II yet.

That's right. I imagine that kind of loosens you up as far as seeing curse words and stuff in movies goes. Yeah, like that's not a big deal. Like World War II is a big deal. Right. Get your haunches down. Exactly.

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 floodgates so that by the end of the 50s, you got some like a 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 code was dead. Yeah, I mean, they weren't passing the code, but they were still getting released. So once something is subverted like that,

it's dead in the water. Right. So there was a, that was fine for a little while. I think the Hayes code 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.

Yeah. So it was kind of a limbo period until 1968. And a store owner in New York with the last name of Ginsburg got busted for selling nudie mags to 16-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 obscenity, not local laws in the Supreme Court said, you know what?

We really think it's up to local municipalities to decide what they want their minors exposed to or not. Yeah. That got Hollywood's attention, because all of a sudden, local municipalities could decide whether or not they wanted to show movies to minors or not. So what was all became new again, and Jack Valenti, who was in charge of the MPAA, said, we need another system,

another self-policing system. And he came up with the rating system that we have today. Yeah. I mean, Jack Valenti was the head of the MPAA for close to 40 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 MPAA's rating system were art-centered. Art-centered, but also money-centered. Because again, if you have town A showing the movie, but towns B through L deciding that the movie is obscene and not showing it, then you're losing that money in B through L. So what Valenti came up with was this idea that let us tell you what is appropriate for minors or not,

what movie is, and we'll just make a simple rating system. G, PG, R, or X. The old X. And triple X, which wasn't even formally a rating. It was just a. Marketing tool. Yeah. Because three X's, that's like, whoa.

I wonder if anybody ever came out with one with four X's. Yeah, or double X even. Yeah. Yeah, we cut out that one part, so we're going to take away X. Yeah, Christian, our colleague here, wrote a great blog post about the former X-rated movie. Is that right? Yeah.

I'll have to check that out. Yeah, it's good. For brain stuff, for stuff of genius. On the Brain Stuff blog earlier this year, and you actually recommended it on your blog. The X rating? Yeah, the best one you've read this week. Yeah, I remember recommending one of his things.

I just don't remember that one. It's good. I thought about asking him in here, but then I thought, we got it. So yeah, back then it was G through X. And well, we'll talk about how that changed, maybe after this message break. Hey, guys.

It's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you

is extra for me. Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Attention, Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope.

But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody care for me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out.

I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, so no longer do we have X-rated movies. Now we have something, I guess we should just go through what these ratings mean today in 2014. OK. So you've got your G. G's always been G, general audience. Anyone can see it. Yes.

And that's your family cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to. Right. 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. Huge criticism.

Huge criticism. PG-13, which we've 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 17 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. Yes. And let's kind of dig into that. So none of this is legally binding. None of them are anything more than recommendations. 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 so for what the MPA 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 chain out there right now,

no major theater chain out there right now, that will show an unrated movie. Yeah, it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film to the MPA ratings board. But it's de facto. 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. Right, and the fee is anywhere from like $25,000 for a big budget movie to $750 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. Yeah, well, there's only one more, and that's NC17, which replaced X. And that means this is a 1990. And it basically means that it's for adults only, and you should not come in if you're under 18. Right, and also it means these days that it's foreign or about lesbian or gays, basically. Yeah, not fully, but sure.

It's pretty close. Yeah. And NC17, the first movie to come out with that was Henry in June. Yeah. That's to be confused with Benny in June. And it basically sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh, this is X now.

Right. NC17, if you jumble it all together, it looks like X. And the whole reason they came out with NC17 was to replace X because X was associated exclusively with pornography in the minds of moviegoers. Yeah, exactly. All right, so let's get into this. The actual ratings board, there's the MPAA,

and then working for the MPAA is the classification and ratings administration, CARA. And CARA doesn't say whether your movie stinks or not. CARA is eight to 13 people, and they are called Raiders, and they are overseen by a 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 in Sheboygan might be offended. Right, supposedly. Which is kind of a thing because the whole rating system, as you just kind of pointed out, is subjective. Totally subjective.

They supposedly, here's the other rub, is it's all secret. Right. 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 this stuff is released. And that's one of the big rubs in that documentary. And with filmmakers in general, it's all done

behind closed doors. There's never any explanations provided. These people are supposed to have kids between ages of five and 17, but many of them do not. Right. Either have kids at all or have kids that are older than 18. Yeah. It basically frees them up for many accountability.

Yeah. To do this all in private and in secrecy. And until that movie by Kirby, what is Kirby's last name? Henry and June. No. No. The documentary. Oh, yeah.

This film is not yet rated. Yeah. Until Kirby Dix, this film is not yet rated, came out. All of this stuff was just conjecture and Hollywood legend. Yeah. 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 did some digging and found these anonymous people did not fall into the requirements that the MPAA said they did. And so not only was it in secret, 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. They rate it.

And then they come together and vote on a rating. And then they pass their vote along to a senior writer who talks to the movie's distributor, director, or producer, says, here's the rating. Here's why we rated it like this. And then you're faced with a choice. You can accept the rating. You can edit your film as per the CARA's recommendations.

Take out these bad words, cut this sex scene a little early, leave all the violence. Yeah. Or you can reject the rating and just release your movie as unrated. Yeah, which, well, you can try to release it. But since no one will show it, it's really sort of a misnomer. 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?

Now, I'm curious about that, how that's going to change the landscape. Well, right now, it's a huge threat to the MPAA. Of course. Because all of the power they wield is found in this rating system. And if. For theaters.

Yes. And if no one's going to theaters. Then the MPAA loses all that power, which is a big deal, especially now, because the MPAA is needed more than ever as a lobbying group because of online piracy, which we'll talk about some more. There'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, I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way. And their trunk is flailing and they're honking. That is true. One thing I should point out, as I said it, is that there's no accountability. That's what the MPAA says is the good thing about the secrecy, is that it frees them up.

That anonymity does, it frees them up from accountability. I just don't agree. Right. OK. So if you want to appeal, there is 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. Well, you never won, that's for sure. Right. And when you were appealing, you couldn't reference any other film. It was totally done in a vacuum, which is pretty preposterous. Yeah, that's the only way to be able to tell. It's like, wait a minute, if you said this about this,

then why not this for my movie? Right. Which meant that there was no real standard that you could point to. Or there were standards you could point to, they just wouldn't be considered. 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. Right.

So the MPAA, they've got their rating system. They've got the appeals process. Which was also in secret, unless that's changed, right? I think the appeals board, not only was the appeals board in secret, but they weren't even just raiders. They were people from the industry. Right. And the Theater Owners Association.

Exactly. Whereas the people who were raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the movie industry and are just like average, ordinary parents. Representing your middle America, we'll just call it. Even though I think that's insulting. The thing is, though, is a lot of people criticize the MPAA and say these raiders are really representing the six major studios

who rake in 95% of the $10.9 billion made in the United States in theaters alone. Just ticket sales, not DVD or anything like that. And that's what the MPAA does in addition to rating. They are, like we said, the lobby arm for these six studios. 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 seems like the way forward as far as distribution goes. Right. Like it's not the future. It's the present and the future. And the MPAA, they're accused of basically trying

to quell new technology by just saying let's just keep people from peer-to-peer file sharing all together so that they can't steal movies in part. And if you go back to the early 80s, Jack Valenti was known to have railed and lobbied against the legality of VCRs. Yeah. People are going to be recording things and handing them

out to their friends. Exactly, yeah. So the MPAA is a long history of basically just doing anything it 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 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. 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 Lars von Trier or Werner Herzog, they're probably like no ratings at all. But I think they just want transparency. Open it up and let everyone 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.

Pretty interesting. So you were talking about online piracy. And with digital distribution being a big deal now, the MPAs 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, but it needs its power more than ever.

So like we said, it's a precarious time for the MPAA. And they tried a few things. They were successful with the, what was the first one in 2000? The digital? SOPA? No, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which basically, up until then, it wasn't a federal crime to share movies on peer-to-peer networks.

That one did it. And they got that pass, the MPAA lobbied and got that passed. Yeah, they've cracked down on camcorder recording, like when you're in New York City and someone has that brand new copy of Godzilla on a video cassette for you. 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. Yeah, and it says that those are the most common. I guess I kind of believe that. They're also the worst quality. Sometimes people will get up and move in front of the camera, like they go to the bathroom or something. I've never seen one, but I think they're terrible. I don't want to say more common, but probably more common

these days are copies of screeners. They send out DVDs to everybody who's members of the academy to vote on movies. And so around Oscar time or before Oscar time, it seems like the internet gets flooded with way more high quality copies of these major movies that are up for awards. Yeah, I think now they have, thanks to the MPAA,

have something coded to your name now on your copy. So 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, you better have a public performance license, because it is illegal to show a movie outside of your home. Yeah, that surprised me.

But there are a lot of, especially in the summertime, a lot of community screenings. Like every city now has, Atlanta shows them. And I think at Oakland Cemetery, and some other places in New York, they have them all over the place. Sure. And technically, yeah, they're supposed to have a license to do so.

I'm sure they do. The big ones. Yeah, the big ones, I'm sure they do. But like at your community pool, when you want to show E.T. And the feds could come and kick the gate down around the pool and arrest everybody. 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 login? Oh, right, yeah. And HBO came out, and they're like, who cares? Yeah, people are watching it. Yeah, go watch True Detective. Maybe you'll sign up for HBO 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. Yes, and that's something that a lot of people say, film industry, we don't really feel that bad for you. Sean Austin, sit down. Because you guys made $10.9 billion in America, in ticket sales alone in 2013, we don't feel that bad about this whole conundrum that the MPAA is facing right now.

What's Sean Austin's deal? Is he one of the voices? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, OK. Yeah. I don't think I knew that. Yeah, he was, I can't remember, there

was like a whole push, an anti-piracy push a few years back. And he was the face of it. Part of it, yeah. Yeah, and he looked really mad about things, too. Rudy. But speaking of piracy, I remember there was a story that came out recently. If you think about it, at first it's like wah wah,

but then if you really kind of lended some thought, it's really disturbing. Yeah. There was a report of prisoners at a prison being shown pirated movies. And some of the prisoners were there for pirating movies. Oh, wow. And really think about the injustice behind that.

Yeah. Like, that's just crazy town. Imagine if you've been selling counterfeit furs and you go to prison and all of the guards are wearing counterfeit fur coats. Pretty swing in prison. It'd be weird, but it would also be unjust. Yeah.

Yeah. True. But in relation to this, it's just more and more widespread. Every day it feels like it's a losing battle, I think, that the MPAA is fighting right now. Hey, guys. It's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode.

We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like, I already love myself enough.

Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention, Bachelor Nation. He's back.

The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all.

And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts.

I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 13. But I need to look up that, look that up again. Because I don't know. I don't see why releasing a three out of 13 names does anybody any good. It does zero good. 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-13. So it'll say like intense sci-fi action or something like that. Or some drug use. Yeah, that kind of thing.

And some critics of the MPAA say it's just basically like shooting a laser beam into like a 15-year-old boy's brain, like brief nudity. Come see it, PG-13. Check it out, kid. And I think a lot of people are looking at it like 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 movies that are being advertised. So you're seeing a lot of ads for R-rated movies on websites that are very popular among the 17 and under crowd. There's a lot of tie-ins for PG-13 movies with kids toys for kids who are under 13.

And so there's this idea that the MPAA is supposedly serving America's moral compasses. But really, at the same time, they're undermining that morality that they're supposedly defending by marketing and exploiting kids. That'd be like a cigarette company having a cartoon animal as their mascot. Can you imagine?

That'd be weird. Well, one thing about the subjectivity of it and the fact that it is a closed book and filmmakers don't even know how to tailor their movie to achieve a certain rating. I mean, to 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 R-rated. And 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. Just to sort of distract from some of the other things. So they'll shoot something kind of really outrageous to get the MPAA's raiders' haunches up and what they were never going to keep that part anyway. Right. So they're subverting the system because there is no set

standard. Yeah. And the stuff they want to keep in is comparatively more palatable. And if you don't have the set standard where you can go and I wonder what those sheets look like on the interior. I mean, that's the great mystery. 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. So I read another criticism of the MPAA is that the difference between PG-13 movies and R movies these days is the profanity and the sexuality. That they're similar in violence, if not more violent in PG-13 movies.

And that this is kind of messed up. That the MPAA has very little problem with violence. But when it comes to bad words or sexuality of almost any nature except for women being objectified and men being gratified, then the MPAA suddenly puckers up. Well, yeah, any woman achieving receiving sexual gratification or a homosexual couple. NC-17.

Yeah. Virtually guaranteed or depending on how they do it are if it's coming out of one of the major studios. 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, you decide. Right, and fetishistic of violence. Yeah, here's one example. There's a great article called Don't Expect Any Major Changes to the MPAA Rating System in 2014. And it's basically Chris Dodd, who's the new head in 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 haven't released. No, none of those studies are released. None of those conversations are released. A movie like Filomena, which you saw, was rated R. Yeah, it was about a lady looking for a long lost son. It was so far from an R movie, it was ridiculous. Yeah, but it had a couple of F-bombs in it.

So they cut those out, and they bring it to a PG-13. You might think, who cares? Cut up the F-bombs, make it PG-13. But there's something bigger going on here, you know? Yeah, there's a great AV Club article about how just totally out of step a lot of the ratings are. And they have 15 movies listed and basically talk about their ratings.

Like the first one they talk about once. That romantic, it wasn't like a romantic comedy, was it? No, I would say it was a bittersweet. Just a modern day romance told through music. It wasn't a musical, but there were a lot of musical numbers. Highly inoffensive. Love story. Yeah.

Very sweet movie. It had the same rating as Hostel 2, which is basically torture porn. They both got the same rating. Yeah, we should read this first line from the AV Club. In early summer of 2007, two films were released with R ratings. One featured a scene where a naked woman is suspended

from a ceiling, while another naked woman slashes her with a siff and bays in her blood. The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together, falling in love, and opting not to act on it. Like there was never any sex scene. They didn't even get together, really. No. They're both rated R.

Both rated R, because of profanity. Rushmore rated R for the 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, like on the Vietnam set. And it shows these little kids looking at those like a 12

year old would probably do. And it got an R for that. Got an R for that. Happiness, Todd Solans, one of my favorite movies of all time. They tried to give it an NC17 rating, and he said, you know what, I'm not cutting anything. You can just go take a long walk off a short pier, is what I think he famously said to them.

And he released his movie as unrated. Oh, really? Yep. I don't think I knew that. Way to go, Todd Solans. Or if you're looking at some serious homophobia, the great 1989 movie, Longtime Companion, features no real sex acts at all, nothing explicit.

In fact, the AV Club says it could show on network TV today with just a few alterations. But it was about a gay couple. And so it got an NC17. Yeah, there was something called Afternoon Delight, which was a movie about a woman who hires a gigolo, and apparently is heavy on the woman receiving sexual gratification. It got an R rating, and it got an R 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 some very graphic apparent sex scenes between a man and a woman. But Leonardo DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most. So it's fine, it's an R.

Blue is the warmest color. Yeah, last year, that teenage lesbian love story. NC17. Yep, got a lot of attention. And there were some theaters that allowed high school age kids to go see that anyway. Because again, this is in law. It's not binding.

It's up to the theaters. Yeah, it's just so strange that such a small group of people have such influence on such a large industry in 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 R for Ridiculous by Kirby Dick, his little op-ed

about the MPAA, that one US News and World Report article you wrote, or suggested was good. I wish I wrote it. Had you been there, it would have been used correctly. Oh, did they misuse it? What? Yeah, I know. That's terrible.

So the MPAA will defend themselves, and they say that there is no such bias, and that 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 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? Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going around? Yes, but what was it? It's like somebody unsuccessfully tries to carry a bomb onto a plane in their shoe. We all take our shoes off.

Oh, right. There's like 30-something school shootings after Columbine, and absolutely nothing's changed. 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. I'm paraphrasing. Oh, yeah. That's the Onion. Yeah, good stuff, MPAA. Keep doing the fight and the good fight. Yeah, go check out, just go start reading up on it. It's funny how much we just take this stuff for granted.

But when you just start digging just slightly beneath the surface, at the very least, see this film is not yet rated. It's really good. Really engrossing. And for every 100 documentaries that come out, what five of them are really great, most of them are pretty good.

Some are terrible. So any really good one is worth seeing just in and of itself. Agreed. If you want to learn more about the MPAA, type those letters into the searchparthousetoforks.com. And I said searchparts, so it's time for listener mail. I'm going to 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 were a sort of living legend that one would occasionally get the privilege of spotting now 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 and less 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 son was just a little guy then and a very light sleeper. And these suckers are loud. That is true. They are very loud. Also, guys, I'm sending you the link to watch the preview of the 2003 documentary, The Wild

Parrots of Telegraph Hill. So I didn't know that was a documentary. I've heard that. I've heard of that before. I never knew what it was about. Amy, I will check that out. 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.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com.

And as always, join us at our home on the web, the beautiful stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Attention, Bachelor Nation, he's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all, and now he's telling all.

It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips

with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast,

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.