'It's Complicated': Why the MPAA prefers smoking guns to smoking pot

The MPAA has embarrassed itself an untold number of times over the years for its prudish attitude toward sex and its wildly permissive attitude toward violence. But what's it's done to Nancy Meyers' upcoming comedy, "It's Complicated," is perhaps the ratings board's biggest boneheaded move yet.

According to a story by my colleague, Steven Zeitchik, the MPAA has given Meyers' fluffy comedy about a middle-aged love triangle an R rating because Meryl Streep and Steve Martin's (who star in the film along with Alec Baldwin) characters are seen sharing a joint while on a date.

The problem, according to people involved with the board's hearing on the issue, isn't that the actors are seen smoking pot -- it's that the scene "features pot-smoking with no bad consequences." Apparently, everything would've been fine if only the characters had been killed in a gory car crash because their reflexes were slightly impaired after sharing the joint, which surely would've served as a stern warning to kids not to ever touch the evil weed.

In other words, you can score a tidy amount of pot at hundreds of marijuana clinics across Los Angeles, but if you take a puff on a joint in a Hollywood movie, you immediately get walloped with an R rating, whether you're a gangsta rapper like Snoop Dogg or a genial white-haired Oscar host like Steve Martin.

It's another outrageous example of the lunatic priorities of the MPAA, which claims to serve the interests of parents but actually dances to its crazy drummer, happily handing out PG-13 ratings to unbelievably violent movies like "Terminator: Salvation" while whipping out the R rating at the first sign of a few naked breasts or, God forbid, an unsheathed penis. In Rob Marshall's upcoming film, "Nine," Daniel Day-Lewis smokes non stop through the entire film, but since it's only cancer-causing tobacco, the MPAA had no problems giving the film a PG-13 rating. That's a travesty. If you're going to restrict kids from seeing a movie because of pot smoking, you certainly should apply similar standards to heedless cigarette smoking. 

The R rating for "It's Complicated," which hits theaters Christmas Day, is especially ludicrous. It would be one thing if we saw Kristen Stewart smoking weed in "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," since the movie is right in the sweet spot for teens and tweeners. But if the MPAA is really sticking up for families everywhere, it hardly seems to be a parental concern that impressionable kids are going to be flocking to see a romantic comedy featuring actors who are -- in the case of Streep and Martin -- even older than some of their grandparents.

I've been ranting and raving about the MPAA's nutty priorities for years without any discernible effect. I think it's time that filmmakers and actors start sticking up for their peers, in this case Meyers, who is getting the shaft from the MPAA for a totally harmless comedy scene. Since George Clooney (and I mean this with no offense) seems to weigh in on every pressing foreign policy of the day, maybe he could spare a little interview time to take the MPAA to the woodshed, which might serve to embolden some of his more cautious brethren to speak out against an organization whose moral compass has clearly gone haywire.

Here's the trailer for "It's Complicated," where you can actually see, toward the end, the giddy after-effects of Streep's and Martin's characters' marijuana indulgence:

  

Comments

[David]

I’m really happy for the Czeck people, as a young democracy, the government is young enough to see that freedom of choice is a right that we are born with.

[SeaShark]

Nancy Meyers should have written the scene with the Streep and Baldwin characters acting "giddy" after achieving a sugar high from pounding down a big bag of milk chocolate M & M's. The weed hijinks concept is deriative, boorish and tiresome.

Drug use in a film like LAUREL CANYON is crucial to the story but is completely unnecessary in most movies, especially Meyers' films. The use of tobacco products in movies is superfluous unless we're talking about a Bogey & Bacall bio pic, and niche movies like THE HANGOVER are available for people who think substance abuse is funny.

I am not asserting a brief for censorship; filmmakers should make the movies they want to make. I do urge filmmakers to be a bit more creative and original, and a lot less reliant on tired cliches.

[SeaShark]

My original comment should have said "...Streep and Martin characters" of course.

[Jim Judy]

The MPAA also forces filmmakers in the other direction -- adding material just to get a higher rating. Why else would "Invictus" (as just the latest example) have one lone "F" word to guarantee getting a PG-13 rating?

[Adam]

MEGAN:
You are living in a fantasy world controlled by your own elected officials. They mold your week mind into thinking that you need a MPAA rating system to help raise your child. For without it, your child will succumb to illicit activities; at least that is what they want you to think.
I’ll tell you what though, you’ve got raising your daughter all figured out. When I offer your daughter some pot, she’ll refuse and reflect on the morals of people like you and the MPAA to steer her clear of making such a tragic choice. Where would your daughter be without the rating system? Would she be sneaking out of your house late at night for a midnight fling with her ex-convict boyfriend? Would she be slamming some heroine in the school bathroom after you dropped her off from school? Would she be stealing?
How would you answer this yourself?
Here’s my guess -->The answer is of course that she would do all those things without the MPAA rating system.