R ratings for "non-historical" smoking scenes!
This has to be one of the funniest things I have seen since Thank You for Smoking. The Hollywood Reporter (via Reuters) says anti-smoking activists are turning their sights on Hollywood -- and making one of the loopiest demands I have ever heard:
Anti-tobacco activists worldwide plan to march Thursday from the Washington Convention Center to Motion Picture Association of America headquarters and call on the MPAA to take action to reduce smoking in the movies, including requiring an R rating for any movies with a non-historical depiction of smoking.Now what the heck would a "historical" depiction of smoking be?
Will filmmakers have to prove that each and every puff on a pipe or cigar or cigarette is a dramatization of an actual instance of smoking in the past, in order to avoid the dreaded R rating?
Will distinctions be made between black-and-white movies set 50+ years ago like Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), which was based on a true story, and black-and-white movies set 50+ years ago like The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), which wasn't?
What about movies like The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), which was basically pure fantasy but, according to J.R.R. Tolkien, was supposed to take place in our own world many, many years ago?
Heck, what about The Chronicles of Narnia, in which the Professor smokes in this world? Is it fantasy? Is it "historical"? Is it both?
Come to think of it, what exactly would the cut-off date be? How far back would a scene of smoking have to take place before it would no longer get an automatic R rating? Five years? Ten? Fifty?
And will distinctions be made between cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, the same way that the MPAA currently makes distinctions between S-words and F-words (and between different kinds of F-words, i.e. if you use the F-word in a sexual way, the film is automatically rated R, but if you use it in a non-sexual way and you use it only once, maybe twice, then the film is PG-13)?
And what if there is smoke but no fire? I.e., what if a scene takes place in a bar with a smoky ambience, or some such thing, but we never see anyone actually light up? Y'know, kind of like how outright nudity typically gets an R rating but merely suggesting it (think Rebecca Romijn in X-Men 3) frequently gets a PG-13?
The American ratings system is too screwed up and politicized as it is; the last thing anyone needs is yet another set of stupid criteria to worry about. Then again, it would give those of us who love to mock the ratings system a whole lot more to work with.
posted by Peter T Chattaway at 10:29 PM
4 Comments:
That is pretty silly. Technically, you could say all smoking scenes are historical in movies.
peter...your picture of a fantasy smoking scene is offensive to me.
Gandalf's smoking certainly should have bumped the films rating up to an R automaticly.
just kidding...this is ridiculous.
--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com
The thing is, I chose that Gandalf smoking scene partly because, at that point in the audio commentary, Ian McKellen talks about how the movie version of Gandalf almost didn't smoke at all. Thankfully, the filmmakers stuck to the book on this point, but imagine how they might have buckled if there had been even more pressure on them.
Actually, here is how McKellen describes this scene at his website:
- - -
Q: Were any scenes you shot involving Gandalf that were dropped from final cut that YOU felt should have been included?
A: It is a mark of Peter Jackson's storytelling that I haven't missed anything that he cut from Gandalf's scenes. In the original screenplay there was a jolly interpolation that has now gone but which we filmed. Gandalf explained to Frodo at their first meeting that he had given up smoking and the two shared some toffees on the cart. As they drove through Hobbiton, Gandalf smelt the local pipeweed to which he eventually succumbed sitting with Frodo outside Bag End on the night of his birthday party. The smoke galleon marked his return to nicotine. Gandalf was again sucking toffee during the strictly no-smoking Council of Elrond. None of this is in the film but I wonder if it may be recovered for the DVD.
Wise theater owners will not enforce the R rating for movies rated as such for smoking scenes. The movie ratings are not enforced by law! Kids see adults doing it everyday on the streets! Normally kids don't see adults having sex on the streets or gruesome acts of violence. Now hows this for a thought: "The Simpsons Movie" could very well end up with an R because Marge's sisters, Patty and Selma, love their cigarettes. If that film is saddled with an R, I will do that which I have never done before, and buy tickets for unaccompanied kids looking to get in. And any movie labled R just for scenes of smoking, for that matter. Let's hope that this is the straw that breaks the camel's back and renders the MPAA rating system into a quaint but meanigless relic of the past, as happened with the Comics Code Authority's once-revered stamp of approval. Worst movie rating decision ever!
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