Events Leading Up To the Creation of the NC-17 Rating:
In 1989 and 1990, at least ten independent and foreign films received an X-rating. Among them were: "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and her Lover", "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!", "Hardware" (all by Miramax Studios), and a number of other films as well. The makers of these ten films sued the Motion Picture Assocation of America (the MPAA or Hollywood's official movie-rating service) over receiving a box-office obliterating X-rating, and as a result, some of the films were either re-edited to receive an R-rating or were released unrated. (I believe movie companies have to pay for the 'privilege' of being rated.) Also, such big-name filmmakers as Francis Ford Coppola ["The Godfather", etc.], Spike Lee ["Do the Right Thing", etc.], Penny Marshall, Ron Howard ["Apollo 13", etc.], and Rob Reiner ["This Is Spinal Tap", etc.], plus the late movie reviewer Gene Siskel and his currently cancer-stricken colleague Roger Ebert, all called for the abolition of the X-rating for mainstream movies. Within a year, the MPAA created and copyrighted the NC-17 rating, for films too controversial for an R-rating, but not for pornographic or so-called adult films. (to be cont'd)
[The original version of this essay first appeared in Eastern Connecticut State University's Campus Lantern student newspaper in the early '90s, in my unpublished manuscript "In Mediocrity We Trust... In Debt We Die" And Other Essays, and in UMass/Boston's Mass Media
student newspaper in the mid-90s.]
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