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As I understand it (and I may be wrong), if you have too many characters in your film smoking, you get an "R" rating now.  Or, if someone in your movie is somehow "cool" (define that as you will) and they smoke - "R".  Unless, of course, your movie takes place in the 30's when smoking was more common, then it's historically contextual and apparently acceptable.

Quote: "Descriptions on sex, violence and language that accompany movie ratings now will include such phrases as "glamorized smoking" or "pervasive smoking."

I really don't get the MPAA...

OMG all my Bettie Davis movies would be R rated now if they went back to the MPAA for a rating.   

i saw this on the news this morning. this is so ridiculous my head was spinning and the kids inside were dizzy for hours.

next drinking will be nc-17...

krik

Quoting Krikarian:

Quote:
i saw this on the news this morning. this is so ridiculous my head was spinning and the kids inside were dizzy for hours.

next drinking will be nc-17...

krik

SSSSHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

The MPAA might me listening!!!


It's a good the PMRC already labeled Motley Crue records with a warning or they'd have to go back and add one for Smokin' in the Boys Room

Quoting kovacs01:

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Quoting vido:

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Makes you wonder if a "smoking gun" would be covered under the R rating

Of course it would be R.  If there is a gun, and it is used on a person than chances are you are looking at an R rating..........

not necessarily...watch casino royale: pg-13, any indiana jones movie: lots of smoking guns, no R.

not if you were blowing the smoke out of...

well, that's graphic and would probably be an R.

(this post in no way insinuates that anyone here at any time in any space ever blows smoke out of...well, you know...)

krik

Quoting antolod:

Quote:




Oops, should be of not or, but you get the idea.

Not bad, not bad at all 

I don't understand this thread.

This is not censorship. This is an industry attempting to avoid censorship. The MPAA is owned & run by the movie studios. All of its funding comes from movie makers. To avoid government censorship, they choose to select a group of people to evaluate only those films which are submitted to it. The MPAA has no power to actually change a film, not even to demand changes. All they do is determine a rating, based on what they and the filmmakers who support it, will be effective guidelines for adults and children who go to movies and those theater owners who agree to determine who can see the films that have been rated by the MPAA. Any film which does not get submitted to the MPAA is given an X rating. The MPAA no longer assigns X ratings to films, using NC-17 for those films deemed too adult to be viewed by anyone under the age of 17.

R rated films can be seen by anyone. All that is needed by a 16-year-old (or a 3-year-old for that matter) is for an adult to attend the showing of the film with them.

The MPAA has determined that certain scenes of smoking are no longer suitable for viewing by unaccompanied children. Nothing more.

IMHO, only smokers would think that smoking ought to be provided to other people's children as a model for emulation. Even if I allow my child to watch an R rated film, the warning will be there for me to discuss how smoking might be portrayed in the film we decide to see. Despite neither of my wives nor I smoke, and despite our simple straightforward discussions of why we believed smoking was an expensive habit to develop, my oldest, my only son, decided to start smoking when he was 18. He quit when he was 30, seven years ago. He told me he wished he had listened to me, his mom & his stepmom, and not believed his friends who thought the characters in films were cool when they lit up. He likes having the money he would have otherwise spent on cigarettes.

But, that's just my perspective. Light 'em if you've got 'em.

The MPAA has nothing to do with banning smoking. It is not the government.

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Banning of smoking in workplaces has to do with employer liability. If smoking is allowed in workplaces (such as bars & restaurants, as well as other workplaces), then employers can be liable for medical costs for illnesses in nonsmokers caused by secondhand smoke. And yes, there have been (at least in California) hundreds of hospitalization bills which have been paid by workers' compensation insurance, driving up the cost of the insurance on employers.

So, for many years in California, there is a state law banning smoking in workplaces, including bars and restaurants, not to punish smokers, but to make work bearable for non-smokers and, more importantly, to drive down the costs of workers' comp. After years of lobbying by the tavern/bar and restaurant industries, claiming they'd all go broke stopping patrons from smoking, the law went into effect over their objections. For a few weeks, hard core smokers either tried to defy the law, or stayed away from the places which enforced the ban. But the bars and restaurants discovered something unexpected... revenues went up. More people went to bars and restaurants because they were smoke-free. (Fewer than 25% of Californians smoke.) Having separate smoking and non-smoking sections were fine for those <25% who smoked, but there were inadequate walls and filters in the heating/cooling systems -- a non-smoking section still smelled exactly like a smoking section. Banning smoking became like by all but fewer than 1% of all bars and restaurants, who closed or became private clubs to allow their owners and employees and patrons who preferred smoking everywhere to do so. But these clubs opened up employee civil rights problems: how can an employer ban potential employees simply because they do not smoke?

You want to smoke, be everyone's guest. But the instant that one person who has no choice (including children) is affected by your smoking, your privilege ends. Smoking is not a right... find the amendment or article in the Constitution which guarantees you the right to smoke anywhere (including your own home), and you win...

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You've mixed an industry's self-regulation (the move by the MPAA to place scenes with smoking on the R-rated factors), with government regulations. They do not cross. One is private sector, the other public. You want to make a film glorifying smoking? You can! But, now it will be rated R by the MPAA, unless you do not submit it for evaluation. Then it becomes X rated. Simple! (And the government regulators were not involved.)