Charlie's Movie (More Left Wing Hollywood Myths-my title)

The Washington Times ^ | December 21, 2007 | Bill Gertz

[highlander_UW]

...the final decision makers tend to be bean counters too smart to let their politics get in the way of the job.

I used to think that but there's something that doesn't make sense then. Of the top 20 grossing movies of all time only 1 had an R rating and that was The Passion of the Christ...and yet Hollywood makes FAR more movies that are R rated than G rated even though history has proved there is a larger market for the less harsh films. So why doesn't Hollywood read their own statistics and make more family targeted films? One would think the bean counters would give more thumbs down on R projects and more thumbs up on G projects if they wanted a better shot at the brass ring.

[discostu]

Well PG-13 is where the real money is, and G doesn’t actually score that awesomely, better than R but plenty short of PG-13. Here’s a good chart: http://www.the-numbers.com/market/MPAARatings/ .The reason they make so many R’s is they’re easier, pleasing the MPAA is hard, because there’s little in the way of actual rules for ratings and it really revolves around making the ratings board happy sometimes even getting on R instead of an NC17 (former X) can be difficult (remember the infamous 13 frames of Robocop that “needed” to be cut). Also many of the people in the business right now grew up in the 70s, a time period when Disney made lots of really bad movies and gave G a bad name, it’s hard for people in their late 30s to think of G and not remember movies like Superdad or The Cat From Outerspace. The good news on the family film front is this is the age of computer animated so G has made a major comeback, in quantity, quality and revenue. And finally R tends to be a dumpzone for the flops, a much higher percentage of R movies stink and thus make no money, it’s also the arthouse dumpzone, potentially good but again not money earners. So most of the “extra” R movies getting made are actually holding down the average revenue.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

I saw the movie this afternoon and liked it. IMO the movie got an R-rating because of all the F-words and the nudity and craziness in the beginning. This movie could have been edited to get a PG-13. Charlie Wilson was an alcoholic and led a sleazy lifestyle, but he was heartsick about the way the Russians were killing the Afghans. He was determined to get help for those people. If this is really true, it’s amazing what he was able to accomplish.

[highlander_UW]

You're correct, PG13s probably do better than straight Gs in the boxoffice, which is why I indicated non-R. My point really still stands though, of the top 20 only one was an R or higher, which was the Passion of the Christ. So in reality, none of the movies that obtain R for sexual content have broken into the top 20 and yet Hollywood churns those out like mad.

And finally R tends to be a dumpzone for the flops, a much higher percentage of R movies stink and thus make no money, it’s also the arthouse dumpzone, potentially good but again not money earners. So most of the “extra” R movies getting made are actually holding down the average revenue.

Your point only carries if the top 20 were weighted by average, but it's by gross. Even if there were lots of trash R movies the fact remains that NONE of them are in the top 20 all time with the exception of the Passion of the Christ, which is hardly the typical Hollywood fare.

It seems as if Hollywood is content to make less money and put out R rated movies, presumably as long as they do better than break even. And some R movies do well financially, but they don't get into the top 20. One would think that Hollywood could grasp that if they want to have a chance to make the really big bucks they'd realize the movie needs the larger audience that include families...and that means staying away from R films.

[discostu]

Nobody is really aiming at making a top 20 grosser. There’s a lot of things that need to go right to get a top grosser, and nobody is quite sure what most of those are.

I’m not looking at the top 20s, I’m looking at the average revenue for the rating. That’s where the real information is, that’s where the bread and butter of the industry is. The top 20s are gravy land, what keeps the doors open are the others, the 100+ movies that come out every year that will never make top 20 of that year much less all time.

The ones that are going for the brass ring are the “block busters”, mostly summer and some winter movies, and if you’ll notice most of those are in the PG to PG-13 range, and many of them populate that top 20. Clearly they do know that when you’re hoping for the big big money keep it out of R. But those hopeful block buster releases only account for about 1/4 to 1/3 of the annual schedule. Whole Hollywood empires are built around the rest of the schedule, look at Miramax/ Wienstien Group, the Wienstiens built two major movie companies on movies that cost $6 million to make and get $30 million at the box office, obviously they’re not vieing for the top 20 list, but a 5X ROI isn’t anything to sneer at either, and yes most of their movies are R, they’re the movie company of Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino the poster boys of profanity.

[Jibaholic]

Cool, thanks. I’m glad this isn’t another hollywood propaganda piece.