Rated G for "greedy".

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

* Directed by Kirby Dick * IFC Films

In his new documentary, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick goes well beyond indicting the top-secret rating system of the Motion Picture Association of America. His real subject is the greed of the Hollywood studios and how they use the rating system to suppress independent films, especially those with queer characters.

Brokeback Mountain notwithstanding, indie filmmakers produce most queer screen content. Unfortunately for these artists, the MPAA maintains rigid control over commercial releases through a secret panel of screeners who often label gay sex as "aberrational behavior." Regardless of the artistic intent, filmmakers adding a little boy-on-boy action are headed for an NC-17 rating and all that it implies: advertising restrictions and limited releases.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated presents an overview of the rating system's hypocrisy, including how sex (gay and straight) is censored four times more often than even the most brutal violence. With the help of a dyke private investigator, Kirby aggressively pursues the identities of the secret screening board members in an effort to understand their maddeningly inconsistent judgments. While the investigation techniques tend to be a bit pathetic, the findings are damning--the panel turns out to be a glaringly white and heterosexual group of "concerned parents," sometimes augmented by Catholic and Episcopal priests.

Kirby obviously has a soft spot in his heart for queer filmmakers, beginning his film with the travails Kimberly Peirce faced in releasing her Academy Award-winning Boys Don't Cry. He compares, for example, the sexual content of Peirce's film, which received an NC-17, with the hetero horniness of American Pie, which skated by with an R.

The MPAA, which emerges in Kirby's film as a creature of the Hollywood studios, wraps itself in the cloak of morality. But like so much in the United States, what the IPAA presents as protecting children is much more about protecting profits. And it's clear that gay visibility on the silver screen suffers for Hollywood's greed.