Why are NC-17 movies still a problem for theaters?

I mean nowadays if you watch Netflix, anything goes now, especially sexually, with shows like Game of Thrones, True Blood, etc.

So since the NC-17 rating is geared more towards sex than violence, why do theaters have a problem with it, when you sex has no censorship anymore on TV and Netflix now? I mean because of Netflix, the cat's already out of the bag now for censorship, isn't it?

Well, for one, neither of those shows are streaming on Netflix, and I don't think either would actually qualify for an NC-17 rating. And I'm not sure I see a logical connection between the two ideas, anyway, even if they were/did. The standards for what people watch in private or screen in public have always been different.

Surely the theatres don't show those films because they can't draw enough of a crowd? Is that because most cinemagoers are underage to see those films? Or, as Yoda said, what people watch and want to been seen watching are two different things?

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

Their afraid it will make their theatre look trashy.

But a lot of underage people watch those movies on Netflix as well, and Netflix has no problem with it. So why does the theater, therefore?

If underage people are watching those movies on Netflix, it's with a parent's account and they can see what's being watched or rented. They have no way of monitoring which films their kids go to, however. Also, theaters have to worry about public relations and extracting a certain amount of money per screen. Parents don't.

Related note: it's difficult to answer these questions because they all seem to contain a presumption that the two things are logically connected, but usually they aren't. Try flipping the question: why would theaters care how people use Netflix? What about Netflix is supposed to change their incentives?

I do not think it is a matter of use, but more so a matter of viewership and numbers.

Regardless of content, I think running time has a lot to do with so much of this.

Theaters have a gap they can fill, I am just not sure what it is yet.

__________________

“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

The question isn't in today's marketplace why don't many theaters show NC-17 movies, but rather why have they never shown them since the rating was invented in 1990? The arguments for not screening them in the 1990s or ten years ago were never about how available "adult" material was in society in general. That now just about anything and everything, from sex to violence, is available online (forget Netflix and HBO, just Google that sh!t) doesn't change any rationale that had previously prevented the distribution and exhibition of NC-17 material in the marketplace to begin with.

I think the entire MPAA rating system in general is outdated and unnecessary. But that is another discussion. From the other direction the question should be about how films get the ratings in the first place, ask the board members of the MPAA why if you can see Daenerys Targaryen naked and siblings getting it on in "Game of Thrones" on HBO, why do you care about French lesbians who love each other or whether Michael Fassbender's dick is hard or flaccid? That is a valid question. For them. But that isn't what you asked. You asked how come if HBO has lots of tittays in it, why doesn't my local cineplex show more movies with tittays in 'em? Partially because movies with explicit sex aren't even made by and large (certainly not in the U.S. mainstream system), and if they are made either here or overseas and they receive the NC-17 rating they are only shown in independent theaters and smaller chains, and generally only in large metropolitan areas meaning large swaths of the country don't even have access.

We can also table the myriad examples of all the inequities and arbitrary supposed standards involved in the rating process, independents vs. studios, and which films get threatened with an NC-17 rating in the first place. There is a good documentary about all of that, This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006), which though over a decade old now is still relevant.




The main things that have supposedly prevented NC-17 films from getting wide screenings in America have to do with policies that forbid it in the chains that dominate the market and/or in the leases of the buildings themselves (vestiges of the X being associated with pornography), restrictions on advertising these films on TV and radio (also because of former associations with pornography), and in a backwards way a belief that these movies cannot make money. They can't make money because they aren't advertised and aren't on very many screens, but whatever. Since 1990 and the X rating became NC-17 in an effort to reclaim the adult rating from the pornographic industry, these are the top eleven grossing titles (according to Box Office Mojo):

Showgirls (1995), $20.3-million
Henry & June (1990), $11.5-million
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1990), $7.7-million
Bad Education (2004), $5.2-million
Lust, Caution (2007), $4.6-million
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), $4-million
Shame (2011), $3.9-million
The Dreamers (2004), $2.5-million
Blue is the Warmest Color (2013), $2.1-million
Crash (1996), $2-million
Bad Lieutenant (1992), $2-million

I did the top eleven because after Bad Lieutenant nothing has made more than $2-million at the U.S. box office. And notice the top three are all still from the initial years of the rating's existence.

As the culture changes should the MPAA shift and even change their ratings? Probably. But there doesn't seem to be a rush on it. I wouldn't hold your breath.

Just enjoy the hooters on HBO.

__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

I'll be first in line for the og cuts of Cobra and Robo.

Showgirls bombed and bombed hard and midnight movies at the theater died with home video.

But Showgirls' rating had nothing with why it bombed did it? I thought it bombed cause it was a really cheesy and bad movie, not cause of the rating.

I think in the case of Showgirls you can make an argument that it made $20-million because it was NC-17, not in spite of it. The rating gave it notoriety and cachet that as simply a bad movie that was R-rated it wouldn't have had, and it might have made even less. United Artists paid a lot of money for Showgirls, re-teaming director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas who had made a surprise hit out of Basic Instinct a couple years before. The production cost over $40-million. So to get the most of their investment, UA got Showgirls pretty wide distribution, to date still the only NC-17 movie to get anything approaching a large release. They protected themselves from vague community worries that underage children might get in to see it accidentally or on purpose at the multiplex by sending out hundreds of extra staff across the country, at their expense, to stand at the doors of each screening, double checking that only those with tickets got in.

Showgirls eventually made its money back on video, and now it is a cult flick. But the campaign and reviews being all about how sexually explicit it was or wasn't made it essentially a soft core porn shown at your local multiplex, which is not what the NC-17 was supposed to be about. It was designed as an attempt to reclaim the adult rating from its association with pornography, and instead Showgirls basically traded on it and branded it as X all over again.

But even if people associate NC-17 with porn, because of Showgirls, so many of today's generations doesn't even know what Showgirls is, so couldn't we start fresh with the NC-17 rating without Showgirls in today's mind?

Also, I don't understand the notion that the reason why NC-17 level material is allowed on Netflix, is because Netflix has parental controls. The theater has parental controls as well, such as only selling tickets to people with ID's that say they are 17. So why isn't that enough of a parental control, compared to Netflix, to show NC-17 movies in theaters?

I think the problem is that the parameters of the question keep changing (or have simply been unclear from the beginning). For example, above you say you don't understand the notion that this material is "allowed" on Netflix is because it has parental controls. But at no point have we been talking about what's "allowed." Theaters are "allowed" to show NC-17 films if they want, they just choose not to. And in your original post, you ask why theaters have a "problem" with them, which could mean several things.

I'm not really clear what the question is, or how it logically connects to Netflix. But I'm pretty sure the answer will end up being some mix of:

1) They don't make much money. Theaters need a certain amount per screen/viewing to justify it; with rental or streaming services, they're under entirely different financial constraints.

2) (possibly one of the reasons for #1) What people are comfortable watching in public is different from what they're comfortable watching in private.

Sorry for not explaining well enough. I guess what I don't understand is the mindset that people that, that sexually explicit material in theaters is bad, but as long as it's on TV, then it's okay. I don't understand the rationale or distinction.

No worries, just trying to clarify.

Well, if you understand the distinction between having sex in your own bedroom, or in a public park, you must grasp this distinction on some level. For example:

I don't think anyone's actually saying this, and I don't think not often screening NC-17 films suggests it, either. That people would prefer to watch more explicit material in private is not akin to saying it's "okay" in one place and "bad" in another. I'd rather not watch a sex scene with my parents, but it doesn't mean I don't think any films should have them.

I also suspect the confusion comes from stuff like this:

What people? How are they exhibiting this mindset? Etc. The questions are phrased as if they're specific and based on two things with a clear logical connection, but when unpacked, they seemed to be based on a nebulous idea of what "mindset" some unspecified "people" have. Obviously that needs to be quantified if you're looking for anything beyond really general responses.

Hope that helps clear things up a bit.

Well the theaters have a problem showing NC-17 movies, so wouldn't that be because of audiences' mindset, or what would the problem be if it's not cause of a mindset?

People, by and large, have little desire to watch explicit movies in public. That they are willing to watch them more in private seems pretty intuitive, to me.

That said, I'm still not sure where all these NC-17 movies are on Netflix. I don't think there are very many at all. The TV show examples you listed probably wouldn't be NC-17, either. So perhaps an additional answer to the question is that we put some pretty explicit stuff under "R" now.

Well as long as it's a good movie or a movie you hope will be good, does it matter if you are seeing it in public or not? I mean are people afraid that they are going to be people masturbating in the theater, or where does the fear come from? Mostly people are concentrating on the movie in a theater and do not pay attention to others around them, right?

As for movies on Netflix that are NC-17, some off the top of my head that were on before were Killer Joe and Kids... I Spit on Your Grave, and Asian School Girls are 'unrated', but that's because they would have been NC-17, if that accepted the rating, which is why those chose not to accept it and go unrated I figure. Either way, the material is still the same, right?

As for TV shows, I thought that Game of Thrones and Spartacus would get NC-17s for sure, if they were released as theatrical movies.

Of course; I can't think of any emotional response or experience that feels exactly the same in public as it does in private.

In the case of the NC-17 rating, we're usually talking about sex, and sex is, for many, a private thing that's a little awkward to have depicted publicly (see earlier example about watching a sex scene with your parents). To me, this is basic human nature, so if it doesn't already make sense to you on an intuitive level, I don't think I can give you any explanation that will.