Bully Punts
Depending on your point of view, the Weinstein Co. either threw in the towel or stood defiant today in its media campaign to persuade the MPAA to rescind its R rating of Lee Hirsch‘s Bully, a moving doc about kids who get picked on and pushed around. The company will release Bully without any rating at all. They’re basically saying “we’ve gotten enough publicity ouf of this ratings battle thing, and we don’t think that opening without a rating will matter all that much as not that many people pay to see docs in theatres anyway. So eff the MPAA…y’know? Who needs ‘em? They’re dancing to medieval Santorum values anyway.”
Of course, nobody wants to hear about the all-but-incontestable fact that the whole “protect the f-bomb” Bully mantra was total smoke from the start.
After seeing Bully I wrote a 3.15 piece called “Bully Doesn’t Need F-Bombs.” I explained that Hirsch, the Weinstein Co., Change.org and Bully petition girl Katy Butler “have been trying to get the MPAA to change its R rating to a PG-13, claiming that the f-bombs are necessary for the integrity of the film because they represent the hateful attitudes directed at the victims of bullying in the film. Or something like that. The Bully team is saying it’s important for school-age kids to see the film but they won’t be allowed to if it’s rated R, hence the ratings battle.
“But the whole issue — and I’m saying this with sincere admiration and respect for Hirsch and the film, which is very well done and quite touching — is utter bullshit because f-bombs are meaningless in the context of what’s shown and the flow of the film and the music and the abundant feelings. This is a doc about cruelty, and the measure of that is in the stories of the victims (two of whom have taken their own lives) and in their faces in photographs and home videos, and especially in the faces and hearts of their parents and brothers and sisters.
“Hearing an f-bomb or three or five is absolutely meaningless in the midst of all this tragedy and grief.
“I myself heard only one f-bomb, and a friend/colleague who sat next to me at the screening said he heard only one also. I checked with a Weinstein Co. rep after the screening and was told that the film contains six of them.
“Honestly and truly I didn’t hear the other five and even if I had (or if my colleague had) it wouldn’t matter. The f-bombs are said by kids during some school bus footage, but the sound is from an iPhone or flipcam video so the aural quality is lousy. It doesn’t matter anyway. This film is about stopping cruelty and raising the consciousness of parents who are too stupid or bull-headed to understand that they need to make sure that their kids don’t make other kids miserable by constantly harassing and teasing and slapping them around.”
Good for them for going without a rating. It is voluntary after all. There should be more unrated movies released in theaters.
Smoke or not, I’m glad he didn’t cave. When idealism (or publicity masquerading as idealism – who cares?) – thwarts an archaic infrastructure, it’s a victory for mankind.
I’d say that they cut off their nose to spite their face by going unrated, but theatrical was probably never a real factor for the decision anyway. How much was this movie going to make if there had never been a controversy and the MPAA had given them the PG-13 outright? Weinstein never cared about getting the picture in the most theaters possible no matter what. This is all publicity for the post-theatrical market.
A Family Thing (1996) written by Billy Bob Thornton has plenty of f words a PG-13 rating.
Bully without the all-but-inaudible f-bombs (if you can identify them in the first place) would have amounted to exactly the same emotional experience. Like I said, I noticed only one of them. The f-bombs don’t friggin’ matter.
There’s a tense family picture-taking scene in Ordinary People when Timothy Hutton loses it and says “give her the fucking camera!” That‘s an f-bomb that matters. There have been hundreds of such incidents in movies over the years. The f-bombs in Bully are like Lucky Strikes and Tootsie Rolls carried in the knapsacks of solders during the battle of Iwo Jima. Not even anecdotally significant.
Will be interesting to see if this leads to TWC challenging any newspapers over their refusal to run ads for the film now (for those who don’t know, many papers have rules saying they will not run ads for films that aren’t G, PG, PG-13 or R rated).
I have never understood on what grounds a paper has to refuse ads for NC-17 or unrated films if those ads don’t violate any of their decency standards.
As to the F-bomb debate, I think the film is much more honest with them and therefore should keep them.
If the point of this is to reach youths on this subject, then a film that comes across as a realistic depiction of life as they know it is far more effective than one that feels false or sanitized.
Jeff, I think part of the reason you didn’t notice them is that they were part of the natural flow of how people speak.
Pretty sure Hutton said “Give her the goddam camera.”
My favorite classic f-bomb is probably the one hurled at Jerry Lundegaard over that there TruCoat sealant.
I have never understood on what grounds a paper has to refuse ads for NC-17 or unrated films if those ads don’t violate any of their decency standards.
a newspaper can refuse anything for any reason
“But the whole issue — and I’m saying this with sincere admiration and respect for Hirsch and the film, which is very well done and quite touching
Great, now kids under 17 can go on ignoring this film without parental supervision.
Good for Harvey I say.
He’s gotten a lot of great press for BULLY which is a well made and deserving film.If he can translate this press into extra eyeballs or extra high school screenings then his strategy worked perfectly.
Publically exposing the MPAA and ratings board for the self-righteous twonks that they are is just the icing on the cake.
Harvey’s been doing this stuff since practically the dawn of Miramax, there’s never been any principle involved beyond what plays best with the press and his pocketbook
thus he’ll threaten to sue the MPAA for giving Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! an X but recut Scandal to get an R, start a new subsidiary outside of Disney to distribute Kids without a rating but happily cut Trainspotting for an R, refuse to recut Bully for a PG-13 just one year after cutting The King’s Speech to a PG-13 against its director’s will, etc.
and of course he will no doubt continue to subject films to his own “improvements” on a scale the MPAA never dreams of — even the R-rated version of Crash wasn’t cut as much as the Weinstein versions of Malena, Farewell My Concubine, Tom-Yum-Goong, etc., and Paolo Sorrentino gave an interview just a week or two ago describing how Weinstein pressured him into recutting This Must Be the Place to make it more “clear,” because god knows it was only a few edits away from mainstream hit material
Is there any doubt that this was all a publicity stunt? No kids who need to “learn a lesson” were ever going to go see Bully without being dragged by their parents.
Publicity stunt. 100%
Bob Violence – that’s all true. Doesn’t make the MPAA right.
yes but it is imperative that foes of the MPAA keep in mind that Weinstein is not on their side, as a figure whose opposition to the MPAA is purely opportunistic and has never extended into a challenge to the system itself, for example support for alternative classification mechanisms that have been proposed or set up over the years and never get anywhere for lack of support from distributors
basically he’s chosen to take whatever leverage might’ve accrued from his relatively unique position (an “independent film” mogul) and use it to benefit from a broken system — which is all well and good if MPAA appeals are trivial expense for you, or if you have a PR machine that can wring every drop of publicity from it, but if you can’t, don’t expect his help
(I was also trying to highlight the lazy press-release journalism that goes into overdrive over an R for a Weinstein film but remains completely silent when he cuts another film at almost the exact same time, but then who cares about Sorrentino, he’s just a director)