This Was Rated G?

Well, I always thought in G-rated movies you couldn't cuss.

In the late 1970's WNEW-TV (now WNYW-TV FOX5) in New York would always cut the line "Ah, sheep's heads!" even though they usually showed the film at 2AM. It was the only line that was cut.

I figure since the target audience for anything with the Beatles at the time was under 18, they'd just let some things slide for ratings' sake, being over their heads and all. Since the early 60s were big on Biblical epics and Sword & Sandals actioners, the word 'orgy' probably just conjured up thoughts of girls in togas feeding grapes to fat guys.

I was a kid when it came out, and I missed most of this stuff - including John playing an escaped convict leering at the girls and growling "Bet you can't guess what I'm in for!":

It is actually a Pepsi bottle...still clever however.

"We all shine on"

Rating, schmatings. I agree, lcrew, the MPAA rating system makes absolutely no sense. Once upon a time, practically every movie really was rated G, even though it didn't have that label on it. Grownups got the subtext of adult dramas, but there was nothing in them that would warp a little kid's psyche forever.

The main stumbling block to children enjoying A Hard Day's Night is the same one some of my adult friends have, and that is wading through the Liverpudlian accents and the British colloquialisms, which for me is the biggest source of the movie's charm. The humor is similar to that in many Monty Python sketches, so I think it's more accessible to Americans these days, and it's no accident that George produced some of the Python movies.

I don't have kids of my own but helped raise two younger brothers who are now in their late 20s - early 30s. I took them to the movies all the time in the 1980s, and I seem to recall a lot more choices then of movies we could see together and enjoy on different levels. One of my brothers was 7 when Amadeus came out in 1984. (It was rated PG then; the Director's Cut gets an R.) I saw it first and wasn't sure he'd appreciate it, but in my view it had no objectionable content. He begged and begged me to take him, and I did and he loved it. It's still one of his favorite movies, but it's not what I or he would call kiddie fare.

One rant and then I'm off the soapbox. My biggest pet peeve over movie ratings in the last 10 years or so is the R rating that Little Miss Sunshine got, and unfortunately deserved. So glad I didn't have kids begging me to see it; glad that I didn't have to explain to them that despite its title it had a lot of adult content -- drugs and the f-word mostly. Still, if my imaginary kids had really wanted to see it, they'd have found a way to get around their imaginary mean old Mom's objections.

The original Planet of the Apes was rated G, and it is terrifying for kids.

In the original version of True Grit, John Wayne calls a man a "son of a bitch". In The Wiz, the Cowardly Lion says "Hell". Both, to my shock, were rated G.



Yippee: "For king!"
Yappee: "For country!"
Yahooie: "And, most of all, for 10¢ an hour!"