It’s no real secret that a movie’s rating can affect its box-office numbers. Receiving an NC-17 rating, for example, can mean commercial death for a film. But how are these ratings achieved, and who is responsible for establishing the ratings?

These are the questions filmmaker Kirby Dick seeks to answer in his new movie This Film is Not Yet Rated, an exposé seeking to uncover the Motion Picture Association of America’s methods, standards, rules and, more importantly, its members.

The main focus of Dick’s film is the veil of secrecy that is draped over the ratings board. In his attempts to lift that veil, Dick encountered threats, resistance and secrecy worthy of the former KGB.

The rationale behind the secrecy is given that it protects the board members from undue influence. Yet, First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus points out that individuals who sit on far weightier boards (such as the Supreme Court) are under more pressure and have more influence on society than the board members of the MPAA, and yet their members are fully known. The irony to this is the fact that the MPAA members meet directly with filmmakers, the very people who have the most to gain from applying pressure and influence.

Perhaps it is apropos that this film is being released when the Bush administration is under scrutiny for illegal wire-tapping and wide-ranging breaches of civil rights. Indeed, in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein investigative fashion, Dick traces connections from the current MPAA back to the Hollywood black list of the 1950s and to the Hays Code of the 1920s, the first attempt at censorship in Hollywood.

Dick implies an implicit collusion between Jack Valenti, former head of the MPAA, and the major studios and conglomerates that own them. Why this is a problem is that the major corporations that own the studios control 90 percent of the media in the United States, so the MPAA is seen by many independent filmmakers as a way to shut them out of distribution – unless they comply with the MPAA’s rather hazy rules.

But the point of this movie isn’t really about who these people working for the MPAA are because, in reality, they are mostly average parents who the general public doesn’t really need to care about.

The point is that these people operate in complete secrecy, work at their own discretion, have no clear set of rules, no recourse on the part of the filmmakers for redress, no identity and no oversight. That’s what’s frightening.

And the implications of the MPAA’s connection to the government are even more staggering. It’s something the film hints at but never really has the time to draw out.

This Film is Not Yet Rated would make a great first chapter in a longer documentary series about the evolution of censorship in all facets of American life and media.

Originally published in The Daily Aztec.