Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 7:38 PM by Gene

Another open letter to JACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

July 24, 1990

An open Letter to Jack Valenti
President of the Motion Picture Association of America

At a time when all artists' rights to free speech and expression are in peril, we the undersigned believe that the artistic freedom and integrity of American filmmakers are being compromised by the outdated and unfair rating system whose practices have and will continue to result in the defacto censorship of their work.

The 'X' rating, originally conceived to indicate that a film contains mature and/or adult material and should not be viewed by children, has come to be universally recognized as pertaining simply to pornography. As a consequence, an 'X' rated or unrated film is denied exhibition in thousands of cinemas nationwide, display advertising is forbidden by a growing number of major metropolitan newspapers, and radio and television advertising in most markets is not available at all for films that are not rated either G, PG, PG-13 or R by your organization. We believe that it is imperative that the MPAA correct this problem by creating a new letter rating that will more fairly reflect the association's original intentions with regard to adult-themed fare.

While the MPAA maintains that its Classification and Rating Administration does not censor films or force filmmakers to censor their films, the taint of an 'X' rating clearly results in massive and arbitrary corporate censorship. Failure to address this problem will help foster a new era of "McCarthyism" in the arts as during the '50s when the networks claimed it was not they who blacklisted artists, but the sponsors.

We therefore strongly suggest that a new rating of 'A' or 'M' be incorporated into the system to indicate that a film contains strong adult themes or images and that minors are not to view them. This is not a compromise between art and commerce, it is an essential action designed to protect the United States Constitution. It is an issue as important as film preservation; in fact, it is film preservation.

Michael Apted
Hector Babenco
Harold Becker
Bernardo Bertolucci
Francis Ford Coppola
Jonathan Demme
Abel Ferarra
Terry Gilliam
Meahem [sic] Golan
Walter Hill Ron Howard [sic]
Jim Jarmusch
John Landis
Charles Lane
Spike Lee
Mark Lester
Barry Levinson
Adrian Lyne
Penny Marshall
Paul Mazursky
Sydney Pollack
Carl Reiner
Rob Reiner
John Sayles
John Schlesinger
Ridley Scott
Steven Soderbergh
Wayne Wang
John Waters
Robert M. Young
Edward Zwick

(P. S. The BLITHERING IDIOT who drafted this masterwork has "arthouse" all over his bio. Nuf said.

Well, one other thing: the "independents" [what a ruse; many of them are owned by JACK's CONSPIRACY] may be right about these @#$%&* SCREENERS -- but a stopped clock can be right every thirteen years too.

One last thing: Menahem Golan, whose name is misspelled here, was one of the industry's leading schlockmeisters, producing several films for SLY [Pffh-hh-hh!].)