December 19, 2007

MPAA vs Gibney.

Taxi to the Dark Side "The MPAA has rejected THINKFilm's initial poster for Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, one of the year's most acclaimed films, over a Corbis photograph of a two US soldiers leading away a hooded prisoner." AJ Schnack talks with Gibney and points to Anne Thompson's report in Variety on the decision that's quickly drawn fury and flame from a, well, variety of voices (see, for example, the cinetrix, Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog, Ray Pride, Chuck Tryon, Patrick Walsh at Cinematical and so on).

The problem, evidently, is the hood. Which, of course, is nuts. Talking with AJ, Gibney "likened the MPAA's desire to eliminate the hood to political figures denying that torture or mistreatment occurs in US facilities. 'Removing the hood is the ultimate cover-up. (The US) didn't use to do that sort of thing. Removing the hood sends the same message as the Bush administration with the CIA tapes. It's OK to do it, it's just not OK to show it.'"

Posted by dwhudson at December 19, 2007 1:36 PM

Comments

Why does the MPAA have anything to do with this?

If ThinkFilm is an "independent" film company, why do they care about various MPAA opinions of their posters?

Why doesn't Think just put out their own damn poster?

Posted by: Ray Privett at December 19, 2007 3:15 PM

If a company submits a film for ratings, the MPAA gets approval of their poster art and DVD packaging. I wrote a piece for Screen Grab earlier this year about porn director Tony Comstock's experiences when he submitted one of his films to the MPAA.

Posted by: Steve at December 19, 2007 3:57 PM

So Think is essentially submitting the film to the studios' lawyers and tastemakers, requesting those lawyers' and tastemakers' approvals.

Posted by: Ray Privett at December 19, 2007 4:22 PM

Likely this has something to do with a similar MPAA decission regarding Michael Winterbottom's film "Road to Guantanamo", which also featured a hooded prisioner on poster artwork.

The MPAA's standard is that all artwork and advertising for a film carrying an MPAA rating must be what they consider "appropriate for all ages"; in other words, all posters, advertising, etc must fall within what would be considered a G rating if it were a movie.

My guess is that by that standard the MPAA considered the artwork for Guantanamo "too intense" to qualify to considered G-rated. Since they cited the hood in that artwork as the reason, they sort of put themselves in a corner when presented with a much smaller hooded figure in the artwork for Taxi.

RE: Think Film

Smells like a publicity stunt to me. If you don't want to play by the MPAA's rules, you don't have to submit for a rating. Think Film didn't submit Shortbus, and then went on to advertise the film as "uncensored and uncut".

Posted by: Tony Comstock at December 19, 2007 4:39 PM

They should just release the poster with a big Black bar over the image (just like the DOD and CIA do over dangerous text) and credit the MPAA with the censorship. I can't believe producers and distributors still care about the MPAA. Who needs major Newspapers to run ads? Buy ads in the numerous free weeklies, or online ads, then when the big newspapers start losing that revenue, they'll change their policies.

I give up!

Posted by: Jerry Lentz at December 19, 2007 8:47 PM