With NC-17, the picture gets fuzzy

On its face, NC-17 seems like the simplest of movie ratings: No one under 17 comes into the theater, period. But the way this rating has been used -- or not used -- since it replaced the porn-tainted X in 1990 shows just how complicated the seemingly simple business of giving parents information about a movie's content can be.

NC-17 is in the news because studios, after not releasing a single movie with that rating in the last six years, are sending out three in 2004. David Mackenzie's "Young Adam," the bleak Scottish drama starring Ewan McGregor, opened April 23, following Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers," which came out in February. A French thriller, "Switchblade Romance," is scheduled for August.

Neither Mackenzie's nor Bertolucci's film was a blockbuster; "Young Adam" brought in a mere $50,278 on its opening weekend and has added only about $70,000 since then, and "The Dreamers" has grossed $2.5 million. But the studios' willingness to release them with an NC-17, rather than insisting, as has been the common practice, that they be recut to achieve an R, indicates that the stigma of NC-17 may be lifting.

In part, that's because some commonly held beliefs about NC-17 turn out to be myths. Even many people in the business thought that mainstream theaters wouldn't show NC-17 films, that newspapers wouldn't accept ads for them, and that video stores wouldn't stock them. In fact, says John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, only that last statement is true.

NATO surveyed 100 of its member companies a couple of years ago, Fithian says, and all of them said that "given a quality NC-17 film, they'd play it in the right markets." And, in fact, "The Dreamers" played in limited release across the country, with little fuss; newspapers, with the sole exception of a Mormon-owned one in Utah, took ads for it without balking. (The Globe, like most other newspapers, accepts ads for NC-17 movies as long as they meet its standards.) "Young Adam" made a similarly undramatic entrance.

As for video stores, Fithian says, it's true that Blockbuster and Wal-Mart won't stock NC-17 films. But he argues that, by stocking video releases of R-rated movies that include additional, unrated material, these stores aren't doing parents any favors.

"There's much more confusion with the current system," Fithian says. And, indeed, many parents don't realize that a lot of the video versions of R-rated movies are released as "unrated" so that they can include exactly the footage that was cut from the theatrical release in order to get the film down from NC-17 to R. "The proper use of NC-17 addresses that problem," he says, because if more movies were originally rated NC-17, the rating would warn parents and (in theory, at least) keep the video versions out of their children's hands.

So why is there still resistance to NC-17? Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box office tracking company Exhibitor Relations, puts it simply. "An NC-17, just like an R, restricts your audience," he says. "It's kind of a strike against you." Studios, in other words, don't want anything that will cut down the potential market for a film, and NC-17, by eliminating a vast pool of ticket-buying teenagers, obviously does that.

On the other hand, Dergarabedian says, the art-house movies being released this year with an NC-17 may not lose much. "With these films, from the outset you're probably not getting that audience anyway," he says.

But Dergarabedian also sees the NC-17 debate as part of a larger fuzziness about ratings. "One man's R is another man's NC-17," he says, and the appropriateness of a rating can vary not just from person to person but over time. "Someday we may say, `This movie was an NC-17, but now it would be an R.' "

Even within each ratings category, of course, there can be wild variation from one movie to the next. "When the R rating has `Billy Elliot' and `Kill Bill' in it, that's too broad," Fithian says. Applying NC-17 more often, he argues, would free the R rating for less graphic but still adult subject matter. But he also notes that the ratings system, which his organization oversees along with the Motion Picture Association of America, does -- and should -- shift as times change.

"The guiding principle is to reflect what the majority of American parents would think is the appropriate rating," Fithian says, "and that will evolve and shift over time."

For Mackenzie, the Scottish director of "Young Adam," the whole debate over ratings feels a little confused.

"Essentially, we tried to make a grown-up film for grown-ups," Mackenzie says. He notes that the film was released in the United Kingdom with a rating that allowed only people 18 and older to see it, "and that's appropriate. But in America, there's a stigma attached to NC-17."

Mackenzie hopes, though, that his film will be part of a new wave of "more adult films -- and by `adult,' I don't mean `adult' the euphemism. Maybe the times are a-changing once more."

Maybe they are. But the very confusion over just what "adult" means when it comes to movies gets to the heart of the problem. As long as American viewers -- and raters -- have trouble deciding whether "adult" means "mature, complex, and sophisticated" or "Debbie Does Dallas," it will be hard to agree on just what "no children allowed" should mean.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.