Filed under: Horror , Tribeca , Lionsgate Films , Critical Thought & Trends , Fandom , Distributi... Tribeca Horror Panel: The

Thursday night saw one of the first big events at the Tribeca Film Festival, a panel called The Kid Slays in the Picture , on the relation between horror films and the debate over violence in the media. The panel featured Jim Steyer , CEO and founder of Common Sense Media, a child advocacy group that fancies itself as a sort of companion to the MPAA, Peter Block , the President of Film Acquisitions for Lionsgate, which has of course been in the media lately over the upcoming film Captivity, and the star of the evening, horror legend John Carpenter . For those who showed up just to hear and see Carpenter, however, the evening might have proved a bit too academic. Following an hour of polite conversation about how best to square child advocacy issues with media regulations, one of the first questions to emerge from the (possibly) frustrated audience was "Mr. Carpenter, what do you think of Rob Zombie's Halloween?" The entire talk went nearly an hour and a half, but here's a transcribed sampling from about the middle 30 minutes. Enjoy.

Moderator: John's films have been successful in all sorts of countries that have much lower instances of violence than the United States. Japan or Switzerland. I imagine his films have been successful there. Saw must play, Hostel must be very successful in foreign territories.

Moderator: So we can't really say the films are going to have the same effect in Japan as they have in the United States, if they have any effect at all. It seems that what you're looking at, Jim, is much more what people are afraid of, than what the real effects of these films were.

Jim: I actually do believe violence is a major public health issue. Again, I go beyond the film genre. I stand by -- you guys might totally disagree with me -- I don't think -- I absolutely don't think you should be able to sell ultra-violent games to kids. I don't. I think that's just stupid, and I think it ought to be treated that way, and we can agree or disagree on that. But I think that's a huge deal. I think that when you look at news media, there's a tremendous need -- this is about content in general -- there's a need on the part of the producers of the shows, Fox News, CNN, there's a degree of discretion or responsibility that is not sometimes exercised. But the one place I'm sure none of us want to go is into the land of censorship or the land of me determining what should be the content of '24.' I think their issue of torture, by the way, the fact that our society has engaged in torture over the last four or five years, is an unbelievable fact, for me as an American to deal with. But I don't blame that on what Kiefer Sutherland does on '24.' Although I think there are issues there that are worth exploring, in terms of the way those scenes are done, only if GIs will imitate what they see on a show like that.

Moderator: Do you see a difference between when those shows are available, for example, on television over the air, versus cable, versus films you actually have to buy a ticket for and go sit in the audience?

Jim: I do. I do personally, I don't know what you guys think, but I actually think -- I teach civil rights and civil liberties, and the concept legally is about safe harbor, basically, the idea of that. And do I think that make sense? Yeah. If you have eight and six year old kids ... I think the process works fine, from my standpoint. I think having the safe harbor would be good. The issue, though, is, with the way technology is changed, and the fact that you can get anything at anytime, whenever you want it, I think its tougher to make that argument. The FCC came out last night with a big statement on television violence -- it will be debated on panels like this for the next six months. I think it's tricky, when you want to respect the first amendment, but you want to create sort of a safe harbor, that's a discussion I think is important for us as a society.

Jim: Well, parents have to do it. I mean look, they're the first line of defense. Your kids are older than mine -- it's hard. It's really hard, and I think putting all of the onus on parents is unfair. I do believe they're the most important line of defense. But scapegoating the media for violence is a joke -- to blame all of society's ills on the media is unfair.But to say 'well, if parents were just doing a good job, we wouldn't have to deal with this ... 'anything goes, no matter what' ... I think that's the other extreme, and I don't buy that either.

Jim: They talk to us, they come to us. They actually came to us, wanting to know what we thought, and we said a couple of things. We said 'good, it's good that Peter has to think about this, as a dad, but also as the President of much of Lionsgate. He's got to think about this in his role at Lionsgate. I like putting the issue out there. Remember, my issue is kids. So I want people who are in a responsible position within the industry to think about it. With John, I think John should go and make whatever films he really wants to make, because you're an artist -- I mean that. You should do what you believe. You're gonna market and sell those things, so I think maybe you'd want to think about how they are marketed and sold. The issue that the FCC is going to propose ... they basically said last night that Congress should have the right to create some kind of regulation about what can be shown on broadcast and cable television at what hours. This is a very tricky area. This is where you get into first amendment freedoms versus the best interests of kids, and then you get into how you define violence, which none of us on this stage are going to agree on. That's where you get to that classic slippery slope about regulations, but I do think its good that they are raising this issue -- I really do. You guys may not, but I think its good, and I think its good if you worry about it some when you think about how you're going to market Saw IV.

Peter: Well, actually we don't worry about it all that much, because there are a lot of guidelines already in place with the MPAA regulations and us -- we don't have to submit our films to the MPAA, but we choose to do it to get the certifications, to get some sort of guidelines, but it's not so much 'worrying.' You worry about it if you go over the line and all of a sudden you cause some furor over what you've done and people decide to focus on one incident. I think that's where it makes it difficult, but as a general practice, we want to advertise to the people who are most likely to go see our films. We're not necessarily interested in advertising beyond that scope. We know that an R-rated film is not going to go towards 8-year olds and things like that, so I think for us, getting some guidelines is okay, because it kinds of focuses where our advertisers are. You and I talked backstage a little bit about outdoor advertising and I used the analogy that it was hard for me to be an opponent of second-hand smoke and at the same question your right to raise issues about billboards in certain locations. It's hard to know which of the ones are going to be problematic. We talked about Captivity, which is a film that we didn't acquire or produce, but we are distributing it in ancillary markets -- someone else is handling theatrical -- but that one seemed to cause a lot of uproar among people, but Anthony Hopkins with a big billboard saying "I Shot My Wife" didn't. "I Shot My Wife" is a concept my son can understand. But some image of a woman with a hand over her face is not really necessarily gravitating towards ... I worry more about the one where it's actually explicit. But how do you know which one is over the line?

Jim: John, you guys were talking about what is over the line. You're a filmmaker -- is there a level of sort of violence in horror movies that is over the line. That go somewhere that is so twisted or so whatever that it shouldn't be done?

John: Taste. Personal taste. The two roughest movies I've ever seen, ever, there was a WWII film called Death Mills. It was a documentary about the concentration camps. It's beyond words. The second is Blood of the Beasts, a Georges Franju documentary about a Paris slaughterhouse. Now, for my own reasons, that was ... that's ... I'm a wimp that way. Theatrical fake movies? Come on. Personally I wouldn't go to a certain place with it, no, but the other thing ... when I was in college I saw what was purported to be a snuff film. I don't know if it was or not. There's no way to tell. That's a place you must never go, you can't go there. And child pornography, you can't do that. I agree with some of the standards that are on television and in the movies ... but the whole point of this is that censorship never works. You cannot destroy an idea. You can't destroy it. You can hide it, you can try to cover it up, but you can't destroy it. It will be there and it will bubble up again. And the reason for a lot of these movies is the culture that we live in -- it's what you've been saying. The events that are going on in our world. I think it's pretty clear, when we start seeing torture movies, why do you think that is? Look at what's happened. I personally love the Saw movies. I think they're a blast. They're funny, and the audience is involved in the survival of these characters that are in these traps. You've got a funny villain that you laugh at, but they can identify with this person trying to save their own life -- identify with a person being tortured. That's what our government doesn't seem to understand -- identify with people being tortured, not the torturers.

Jim: You asked me where, I wrote a book where I was very critical of Haim Saban, you guys know Haim right? He made Power Rangers, and now is a billionaire from cutting pretty interesting media deals. I actually do have an issue with, like, cartoon violence aimed at two, three, and four year olds, because it does affect them. There are clear, scientific studies that show that repeated exposure to little kids actually affects their behavior, making them more aggressive. It's a public health issue. I totally distinguish between that and being critical of that, and doing horror films, which are works of art that are clearly aimed at an audience that is ready for them, and the information is out there. The information is clearly out there, whether its MPAA ratings or Common Sense Media -- you can find out what is in Saw IV or Halloween. That's the beauty of the filmmaking genre. It's interesting because I think filmmaking is not only a great art, but its also the one where I think for the most part, its not a big deal, other than the marketing. I don't really want to see an ad for it when I'm trying to watch the Giants game at 10:00am in the morning. That's my only issue.

Moderator: Give us an example of things you have argued with him -- some of the battles you've won, some of the battles you've lost. Has anyone here seen the Kirby Dick film, This Film is Not Yet Rated? Most of what Kirby was dealing with was sex, so now we'll hear about some of the violence.

Peter: I think we need a rating. Without a rating, we don't get into video stores, we have trouble getting certain television, we wanna get advertising in newspapers, so we need the rating. They help give us guidance. The worst situation would be if they just said 'it's NC-17' and didn't help at all, but they've been very open in terms of saying focus on these moments, focus on other moments. It's not that it becomes combative so much -- sometimes it becomes a little humorous, when you get down to the point, the nitty-gritty where you're an NC-17 and you've got six neck cuts at the end of Saw III ... okay, what do you want? 'Well, you've got two gashes, a couple of gurgles and a slice. If you can get rid of a gash and a gurgle,' we can probably get you the 'R'. So it comes down to one gurgle? 'No, it's a gash and gurgle.' But if we get rid of the gash, there's still a gurgle, and that's 'R'.' At the end of the day, even they would acknowledge there is no set standard, but actually they are responsive, they're helpful, they enjoy the talking with filmmakers, and we've actually had a good experience with them. When you're onto Saw III and IV, they know that the marketing is going to go to a certain audience, they know those people will understand the films -- what they're concerned about isn't necessarily the content of the films, what they're concerned about is that people won't appreciate what the content will be and will be surprised by it. Sometimes something that happens at the beginning of a film is far more aggregious to them than something that happens at the end, because if you've been telling the story, people know what they're gonna get. So the MPAA has actually been great that way. I actually have more problems, not between the NC-17 and R, which I really need because of economic issues, but between the R and the PG-13. That's a real odd area for me, and certain bigger studios seem to have a greater ability to get certain things through at PG-13 that I know we would never even have a chance to.

Peter: I had a film a few years ago that I worked on that I loved called Beyond the Sea, the Bobby Darin story, with Kevin Spacey. It's one of my favorite projects. Well, we were R forever until we got rid of the f-word. We were allowed to have it clearly once, we had it three times, and as long as our second one was not of a sexual nature, they actually let us get away with it, and Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee ...there wasn't anybody in that demographic that we would love to reach, that actually wanted to see the movie. And we spent more time arguing about that than we did about gashes and gurgles in Saw III. Those are the things that bother us, but I think if the MPAA could kind of get to a healthy place where we had R-rated films and we had hard-R rated films, I'd be really happy. The NC-17 is kind of a dagger to films, because Walmart won't take it, Blockbuster won't take it ... actually that's a misnomer, because they'll take it, but they want an R-rated version of it, and then 90 percent of their sales will actually be of the unrated version or the NC-17 version if we accepted the rating, but I need to get into stores and I need to get onto Showtime, and I need all these things. That actually pays for how these films get made. By making it NC-17, I can't do it. But I'll take Hard R. I'll take a more restricted R-rating, and we need to get to that point, but not for political reasons. They've actually been quite good about it. We need them, they kind of need us -- they want us, because we aren't obligated to submit to the rating system. They want us to voluntarily do it, which we do.

John: Yeah, sure, I think everybody does. They're just sensors. That's what they are, that's their job. They have a rating system, which I think works pretty effectively, you kind of get an idea of what you're gonna see. There's a lot of negotiating that goes on. If you take something to far, they'll want you to pull it back, but at the gate with every work, there is censorship, and there has been ever since man began to paint things and write things. It's all the same story, over and over and over again. Look, you have to admit that some of the best films ever made during the code era. You couldn't do anything. Look at 1939, this brilliant year of filmmaking. Historically, after WWII, after what happened, that didn't work anymore. The little American bubble was starting to change with the demand for more realism and darker films, because it reflected the darkness of what happened in that war. And boy it's dark now, I'll tell you that.

Jim: I just want to actually make two points. You guys look at the MPAA as a regulator, right -- it's the industry. The MPAA is called the Motion Picture Association of America.

John: Exactly. And local government was going to regulate it. The only way to save the whole situation, the studios decided, was let's set up our own self-regulation. We can be good guys, its all good, we go through the process, we follow the rules, and here are the guidelines, etc ... they're still censors.

Jim: And its interesting, because Common Sense basically is the complement or the alternative to the MPAA and I would tell you we do a much better job of getting you information as a consumer about what's in a movie than the MPAA. I think we're much better, fairer and more honest and we don't say how many times they say the f-word, as if that matters, because we just tell you what's in it. We're nutritional labeling -- we let you decide. So I'm actually critical of the MPAA rating system much more in what Peter was saying -- it's not in the horror genre. I haven't had the debate over NC-17 and I understand the challenges, if you're a filmmaker trying to figure out how to do it. But it's the PG, PG-13, R thing and its the absurdity of how many times you say the f-word, as opposed to the contextual nature of the story, which is really what should determine recommendation. I think it's fairly antiquated, actually. It's Jack Valenti.

Jim: I think that's completely an individual choice, and I mean that. I really mean that. Dads tend to be more worried about sex if they have daughters and moms tend to be more worried about violence if they have sons. It's actually quite interesting in that way. I think its really up to the individual. I think what you need as an individual is the information, and you don't want to be blind-sided. That's my whole thing -- I don't want to be blind-sided. I don't want to go to the movie and have to see a trailer for Saw if I was trying to see Bambi or Pirates of the Caribbean. But I think it really depends. For me, personally, commercialism and a constant selling to my children in various media forms, and the materialistic commercialism of a lot of media, is probably as troubling to me as sexuality or violence. I think it depends on how you view your role as a parent, how you view your kids. I don't think one is worse than the other, but I do think they are important to deal with. I do believe media does impact people's behavior, and the average kid today spends about 50 hours a week consuming media, and you can now get it any platform imaginable. That is something that we as a society have to think about. It doesn't mean we have to be censors, it means we have to be smart and use common sense about how we do it and give people the ability to filter out what they don't think is right.

Peter: But you're using it more as a guideline for what you want to see, as opposed to a limitation on what people can and cannot see. That's where the fallacy of the MPAA really comes in, because while it restricts who can buy a ticket to a movie, it doesn't actually restrict who gets to go see that movie. That depends on the theaters. I'm convinced, and we've done studies on this, that ten percent of people who see our R-rated movies bought tickets to PG-13 movies and then walked right in. Those people were also watching it on pay television or DVD.

Peter: I'm not so sure we can necessarily measure without policing every theater, but you're basically dealing with ticket takers who don't have the ability to go and look in every theaters. It pains us when we have an R-rated film out and there's a PG-13 that we know is taking our tickets. We had one instance last year where it went the other way. We had a picture called Employee of the Month while everybody else had Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But at the same time, those kids can buy the DVDs wherever they want, so its sort of restricting and sort of not ... where it limits people's access to it, I sort of swing back to what John was talking about, which is freedom of choice and freedom of expression.

Peter: I don't think there's anything that I don't want them to see, but I think that I don't want them to see anything without thinking about it. John is absolutely right -- the worst thing you can do in that case, with a 16 year old, is say 'don't see that.' It's why Cannibal Holocaust has sold millions of units. It's why Battle Royale is one of the most popular titles around -- banned here, banned there, it martyrizes these films. I think the key is education, to let people know. It's not real.

Peter: I'm not so sure that they necessarily get the joke, but there are certainly a lot of people who were exposed to that and didn't grow up doing the types of things we were concerned that they might end up doing. I think its the anomalies ... individuals will look for any avenue to be able to kind of support their theories. I don't think the movies cause it, I don't think Tom and Jerry or Itchy & Scratchy cause it ... when I take my kids to Disneyland, for my daughter, Dumbo is scary enough. My son hates Splash Mountain. So I don't want to overexpose them to things that could scare them, unnecessarily.

Jim: I absolutely believe that repeated exposure to violent media desensitizes media to violence, which I consider a huge issue. And I believe that our society in general ... because we allow stuff to go on in society, we accept violence as a more normal part of life. We numb them. The real arguments against violence in the media are that it desensitizes the audience and therefore they accept it in society. We are a violent society. We've allowed a lot of very violent behavior to occur in our foreign policy and ... that's not a great direction for our society to be headed. The second is copycat -- that it will actually create aggressive behavior in people. I think that's fairly limited, I think its limited to generally people who have a lot of other issues going on ... the desensitization issue to me is a much bigger issue, because I do think America is way too violent of a society. I blame it on gun control, or the lack thereof, I blame it on the behavior of a lot of the leadership that we see. I would ask you guys ... it's not about whether or not you should make Halloween or Saw IV or whatever, but do you think the repeated exposure to violent behavior in general has desensitized our society to real-life violence, and is that something we should should be concerned about?

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