‘Honey, I Had to Shrink My Movie’

The movie rating system was branded last week as “arbitrary” by the angry producer of Paramount Pictures’ “Whispers in the Dark,” and as homophobic by Fine Line Pictures, the distributor of an upcoming art-house film called “Swoon.”

Their complaints, made independently, were the latest in a string of bitter remarks over the ratings administered by the Motion Picture Assn. of America and the National Assn. of Theater Owners. The ratings are the widely recognized trademark letters G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17, used as a guideline to what may be acceptable fare for children.

In both cases that surfaced last week, the movies had been rated R, meaning that any person under age 17 is required to be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.

In the case of “Whispers in the Dark,” the producer said that the ratings board made the filmmakers “go through a dance” for what turned out to be very minimal cuts. With “Swoon,” the movie’s theater trailer was judged by the MPAA to be unsuitable for most audiences.

The murder thriller “Whispers in the Dark” initially received an NC-17 rating, and co-producer Martin Bregman angrily said the scenes in question were much less explicit than “Basic Instinct,” the recent R-rated sexual thriller starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone.

The NC-17 rating means that no children under 17 will be admitted . . . period. Many newspapers refuse to print ads for such films and some theaters will not show them. Only one major studio film, “Henry & June,” has ever been released with the NC-17 rating.

“(The rating board) was about the most arbitrary and extraordinary organization that I’ve ever had to deal with,” said Bregman, the producer of “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico” and “Sea of Love,” among others. “Whispers in the Dark” stars Annabella Sciorra and is directed by Christopher Crowe.

Bregman said he believes the problem the rating board had with “Whispers” was with the opening credits, which he described as an “erotic dream, where you see two people making love. You see bodies, no faces. It’s out of focus. It’s hot, but not offensively hot. There’s a lot less explicit (sex) than there was in ‘Basic Instinct.’ ”

Bregman said “we redid the opening several times, and they knew we were under the gun with the release date (Friday). In the end, we had to take out very little in order to get the R rating.”

The producer said there was no alternative for Paramount but to change the film, since it needed to protect the $30-million investment in the movie. “A major studio cannot send a film into the marketplace without a rating,” he said.

That may be true for a major, but not for an independent distributor like New York-based Fine Line, a division of New Line Cinema, which will release “Swoon” in Los Angeles, New York and other major cities beginning in September.

Fine Line President Ira Deutchman said his company was actually pleased with the R rating for the movie--but they were so angered by the restrictions placed on their advertising trailer, they decided to forgo the rating entirely and take a risk on opening the movie without one. MPAA rules require that it approve trailers and ads that accompany an MPAA-rated movie.

“We were told that our theater trailer was going to receive the MPAA’s red-band label because of its homosexual content,” Deutchman said. A red-band trailer means they can only be shown in theaters where R or NC-17 movies are being shown. Green-band trailers can be shown in all theaters.

“There’s nothing lewd about the trailer,” Deutchman said. “While the movie is not explicit in terms on what is on screen, the movie is explicit about the ideas it deals with. Imagine, they wanted us to take out any reference to homosexuality when that is what the movie deals with. Part of the responsibility of marketing a movie is to let people know what the film is. To create the right expectations.”

There was clearly an “automatic bias” against anything with even the mention of homosexuality, he said.

Deutchman also pointed to “Basic Instinct,” saying that movie’s trailer was more erotic and suggestive than the one for “Swoon.” The only references to the gay theme in the “Swoon” trailer are a voice-over that says “homosexual” and one piece of graffiti that shows the word queer . Otherwise, he said, there is no visual evidence of a gay relationship.

“If we had accepted the red-band restriction, that would have limited our ability to advertise our movie,” Deutchman said. Theaters showing G, PG and PG-13 films could not show the red-band trailer according to MPAA rules. “Given that, we would then lose about half the art-house theaters for our trailer. We felt it was better to give up the rating.”

He acknowledged that sending an unrated movie into the market is a risk, because some publications and theater chains are leery. But he said most major cities have art houses where the film will be more accepted.

The MPAA office in Sherman Oaks, where the reviewing of advertising and trailers is handled, did not respond to a call from The Times as of the deadline for this issue. Generally, the office does not comment on rating questions.

The complaints surfaced in a week in which the MPAA announced it will provide detailed explanations for parents about movies that are rated PG and PG-13.

“Swoon,” which played last January at the Sundance Festival in Utah and was an opening night attraction for the recent Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, is the story of two intellectuals, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, made famous for the 1924 kidnaping and murder of a boy. “Swoon” features actors Craig Chester and Daniel Schlachet and was written and directed by Tom Kalin.