Bully

[serious crayons]

That's a big improvement.

Maybe not, if it puts "Bully" in NC-17 territory.

[milomorris]

Maybe not, if it puts "Bully" in NC-17 territory.

I thought "not rated" left things open. Is it possible to acquire a rating of NC-17 after a "not rated" release?

[Mandy21]

From what I've read of these and other articles, "Not Rated" means just that.  It would be released with no official rating specifying or limiting viewership.

[serious crayons]

Oh, I may have read it wrong. Somewhere I thought I saw that schools would balk at showing unrated movies, as well, thinking unrated can be an indication of adultish content. But now I see that Weinstein thinks that could be a good solution, so I may have misunderstood.

[milomorris]

Oh, I may have read it wrong. Somewhere I thought I saw that schools would balk at showing unrated movies, as well, thinking unrated can be an indication of adultish content.

No. You're right. Some schools will keep their hands off an unrated movie. I just think that the number of schools that do so will be fewer with "unrated," than "R."

[Mandy21]

From this article yesterday, it sounds like it will be the theater's decision to admit or not admit.  Hmm...  Perhaps the limited release Friday will set some precedents before it goes nationwide.

'Bully' stands up to MPAA with unrated release
March 26, 2012, 5:02 PM EST
Entertainment Tonight

Following a close-but-no-cigar R-rating battle with the MPAA, Weinstein Company Co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein will release his new documentary, "Bully," unrated in theaters on March 30.

The unflinching and emotional documentary, flagged with an R rating for language that has been deemed inappropriate by the Motion Picture Association of America for anyone under the age of 17, has been the subject of debate since Weinstein challenged the organization's influential ratings decision, declaring the film too important to be missed by its target audience: children.

But despite an outpouring of support and petitions by schools, parents, celebrities and politicians, the film failed to get a PG-13 rating by just one vote, preventing the film from being screened in schools as an educational tool and making it that much more difficult for much of its crucial audience demographic to see it.

"The small amount of language in the film that's responsible for the R rating is there because it's real," says director Lee Hirsch. "It's what the children who are victims of bullying face on most days. All of our supporters see that, and we're grateful for the support we've received across the board. I know the kids will come, so it's up to the theaters to let them in."

The unrated "Bully" will start with a limited release on March 30 in New York at the Angelika Film Center and AMC Lincoln Square and in Los Angeles at The Landmark, ArcLight Hollywood and AMC Century City.

[milomorris]

I just heard on the radio that Bully be unrated when it comes to Philadelphia too. We also have a member of city council who is working in favor of the film getting as much exposure as possible.

[Mandy21]

http://news.yahoo.com/one-bully-theaters-bigger-bullies-184746466.html

One 'Bully' in theaters, but bigger bullies on Web
By Zorianna Kit | Reuters – 14 hrs ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - New film documentary "Bully" has made big headlines in recent weeks over its U.S. film rating, but larger than the topic of who can see the movie is bullying itself and its spread due in part to social networking and technology.

Bullying has existed for centuries and likely dates back to the dawn of mankind. But in recent years, speaking out against it has become a rallying cry for parents, educators and celebrities from Ellen DeGeneres to Lady Gaga. The 2010 suicide of gay college student Tyler Clementi was just one high-profile case that struck a chord with many people.

"Bully," which opens on Friday and was directed by Lee Hirsch, follows five kids and families over one school year, looking at the issue and how it has impacted their lives. Stories include two families in which kids have committed suicide and one mother awaiting the fate of her 14-year-old daughter who was jailed for bringing a gun on a school bus.

While the extreme outcome of bullying is suicide, as in the case of Clementi, other effects include the loss of self-esteem, troubled relationships, depression and self mutilation.

The movie reaches theaters after stirring a controversy over its initial rating that restricted people under 17-years-old from seeing it without a parent. It is now being released unrated. But beyond the rating, bullying is a growing problem in part because technology has given today's youth more ways than ever to torment others, experts said.

Using cell phones and computers, kids send immediate, nasty messages via texts or posts on social media websites. And many experts see the Internet as a new school playground where kids gather to share information, post pictures and trade gossip.

"Today, bullying is 24/7," Ross Ellis, founder and chief executive officer of STOMP Out Bullying told Reuters. "It's at school, you go home and it's on the Internet. It's there all the time."

Julie Hertzog, director of parental training group Pacer's National Bullying Prevention Center noted a direct correlation between what's happening at school and online.

"They're not exclusive to each other - they're happening synonymously and heightening the experience," she said.

Currently, one out of four kids is bullied and as many as 160,000 students stay home from school on any given day because they are afraid of facing their bully. Each month 282,000 students in U.S. secondary schools are physically attacked, according to STOMP out Bullying.

When it comes to cyberbullying, 43 percent of teens and 97 percent of middle schoolers say they have experienced it. Fifty-eight percent of them do not report it to an adult, according to the STOMP out Bullying group.

EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY

Ironically, however, education, technology and the Web may be the very things that can have a hand in diminishing bullying, said "Bully" director Hirsch and others.

"When I was a kid, when a teenager committed suicide, the connection wasn't drawn to bullying," the 39-year-old filmmaker said. "Now we learn very quickly in the wake of these tragedies because kids will go on Facebook and start writing about what was happening."

Dr. Joel Leibowitz, an L.A. based psychologist who deals with children, teens and issues involving bullying, told Reuters that parents, teachers and administrators no longer can risk the belief that bullying is a rite of passage or that kids will work out problems among themselves. And he thinks the public's attitude toward bullying is starting to change.

"Educators and professional are now aware that there are serious, long-term consequences to bullying," he told Reuters. "It's considered to be a trauma, so you can think of post-traumatic stress disorder as a consequence of bullying. That can really be a problem for individuals and for society."

Hertzog believes the documentary "Bully" could help be a catalyst for change, calling it "an amazing opportunity for dialogue" while Liebowitz feels it can "bring people to a greater sense of awareness" about the issue.

Director Hirsch is hopeful, too.

"I actually think we're on the cusp of a profound tipping point towards the positive," he said. "People are talking about it and that's meaningful. That's how change happens."

Liebowitz said there will always be some element of bullying in society because it is human nature for some people to be bullies and others to feel bullied. But, he added, the behavior can be moderated through education.

"Kids can be taught to learn how to deal with their feelings and not have to act upon them," he said. "That would translate to future generations learning from those who have been taught in this generation."

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Jill Serjeant)

[Mandy21]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlo-thomas/bully_b_1382354.html

Marlo Thomas
Award-winning actress, author, and activist

Bully: The Year's Most Important Film
Posted: 03/29/2012 8:39 am


I'm not a movie reviewer, but I strongly recommend that you take your child by the hand this weekend -- or several children -- to see the new documentary film, Bully. The only problem is, you might not be able to find the film at your neighborhood cineplex. That's because the Motion Picture Association of America has stamped the film "Unrated," after a long and noisy battle over its original R-rating. So now it is up to the individual theatre owners to decide whether or not they will exhibit Bully. I urge them to do so.

But make no mistake, even if you have to drive your kids across state lines to see the film, your kids need to be in the audience -- because, whether you know it or not, they may be among the 13 million American children affected by bullying every year. For them, this is more than just a movie. It is real life.

And in this real life, parents have been all but invisible -- invisible in the school cafeteria, invisible on the playground, invisible on the school bus and online -- unwittingly abandoning their children to face this torment alone. The film makes this painfully clear, whether it's the dad who confidently recites that timeworn rationalization about bullying -- "Kids will be kids" -- or the school administrator who blindly insists to a worried parent that her students are "good as gold on that school bus" -- intercut with a clip of a small boy being choked on that very bus. We come away from Bully feeling defeated and enraged.

Interestingly, the MPAA's controversial decision about the film's rating -- based on its use of profanity and other violent language -- could end up working in the children's favor. Research indicates that bullied kids are not comfortable revealing their dangerous predicaments to their parents. But now that the rating has forced kids to see the film with an adult, the movie can do the revealing for them. And children will at last feel their parents there, by their side, seeing and understanding what it's like to leave their house and wander unprotected into a scary world.

Adults may be horrified by what they see in Bully, but the kids know this world all too well. Directed by Lee Hirsch, the film captures the wrenching drama of schoolyard bullying -- the hitting and harassing, the tormenting and tears, the grave suffering -- in unflinching detail, as it zooms in on the daily battles waged by five bullied children, two of whom ultimately commit suicide. But sitting through the film will be worth every harrowing minute, especially to the children, whose only hope against this ever deepening crisis is the visible and vocal support of the adults in their lives.

The MPAA's decision has incited a storm of protest. When Bully was first given an R-rating, a 17-year-old Michigan high-schooler, Katy Butler -- who has been bullied herself -- posted a petition on Change.org, demanding that the MPAA change the rating. When such high-profile and conscientious activists as Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp joined in the protest, the MPAA was effectively arm-twisted into changing the movie's rating to a still restrictive "Unrated."

But while all of this debate continues, the sad fact is: children are still dying at the hands of bullying.

This is why I am urging all adults -- parents, guardians, caregivers -- to take your kids to see Bully this weekend. I also encourage educators and school administrators to arrange school-wide field trips. Because if there's one thing we've learned since launching our anti-bullying campaign last year -- with the Ad Council, the Department of Education and funders like AOL, Facebook, the Waitt Family Foundation and the Free To Be Foundation (who have been major funders of the Bully Project) -- it's that, if we are ever to eradicate this deadly, modern-day scourge, we need to face the problem head-on -- and together.

[Mandy21]

http://news.yahoo.com/bully-director-says-never-meant-r-film-232319151.html

"Bully" director says never meant to make "R" film
By Zorianna Kit | Reuters – 12 hrs ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Documentary filmmaker Lee Hirsch spent a year at three schools in Sioux City, Iowa, following five kids and families who have been impacted by bullying for his nonfiction movie "Bully."

The film, which opens in select theaters on Friday, has made headlines in recent weeks for receiving an "R" rating from a movie industry group for language, namely for multiple uses of one particular curse word. In the United States, an "R" means kids under 17-years-old must be accompanied by an adult.

After failing to get the rating changed to one that is less restrictive, distributor The Weinstein Co. decided to release "Bully" without a rating. That, in itself, could limit audiences because some theater chains won't screen films without a rating.

As the release date neared, however, AMC Theatres decided to allow kids as long as they have parental approval, and Regal Cinemas and Carmike Cinemas will show it, too, but under the same restrictions as if it were rated "R".

Reuters spoke with Hirsch recently about the controversy surrounding the rating - he and others complain it bars the young audience for whom the movie is meant - as well as the subject matter and the filmmaker's own experience with bullying.

Q: When you were shooting the documentary, did you know you were making an R-rated film?

A: "No, I didn't. Never in a million years did I think we would have an R-rated movie. The spirit of it never felt R-rated. We set out to show what really happens, what these kids go through and what bullying looks like. (The curse words) are incredibly meaningful in the context of the film. Language carries power. That's how bullying takes place."

Q: Do you think that because you also subtitled the objected words, the visual of seeing them on the big screen made it seem more prominent to the Motion Picture Association of America?

A: "We chose to subtitle it because the audio was garbled, and you couldn't see (the bully) saying it. It's actually not very easy to understand what's being said. We needed the subtitles."

Q: Did you consider putting sounds over the swear words to block them from being heard?

A: "Of course we considered it. My feeling is that language matters. (Victims of bullying) are constantly having their stories minimized. Sort of like, 'Oh it's not so bad.' Having been bullied, I can relate to that. A big piece of this film was to kill that argument, to show that it is bad, it's mean, it's scary and it's serious, so serious that kids are being driven to suicide. So for all those reasons, in this context, it matters. We're holding our ground because it matters."

Q: Do you worry that some may find the film underwhelming because the "R" rating earned so much media coverage that the reality of seeing how the word is used is a bit of a let down?

A: "That's happened a lot. People see it and say, 'What's the problem?' Those who haven't seen it have said, 'Oh, this film has so much profanity, I'm afraid I can't take my family to see it.' The reality is there are six uses of the F-word. But there's probably four that are even really for real. One of them is while (a victim) Alex is being choked."

Q: The film focuses on the victims, not on the perpetrators. Was that done on purpose?

A: "I felt like the perspective of this film was to walk in the shoes of these families and kids. That's the point of view of the film. That was where my comfort level was narratively. For me, the film lived these verite moments of what these families go through."

Q: Did you ever feel compelled to follow the lives of one of the bullies, to show viewers what their personal life was like?

A: "Maybe that'll be for 'Part 2' (laughs). The truth is, it was difficult. What I can share is that the beating of Alex on the bus - we had to go back and get signed release forms from every single family from the kids that bullied him. If you notice in the film, only one face is blurred. So we had those conversations. A number of the families had never been made aware that the incident even happened. The families were really upset. There were tears. But they agreed to sign releases, which was extraordinary."

Q: It's astonishing to see kids beating Alex up in full view of the camera. Did you use a hidden camera to capture it?

A: "It was not a hidden camera. They were aware that I was there. But I'd been in that school (filming) for almost a year. We stopped being interesting (to students) on week two. They were just kind of doing their own thing. On some level, they felt they had license to bully him because they'd been able to do it for so long."

Q: You offered no statistics about bullying, about how bad it is in society, or its long-term consequences. Why?

A: "The minute you start putting experts and charts and graphs and solutions, to me it kills the opportunity for people to arrive at a choice to change on their own. The film ends and the conversation begins. Of course, I didn't always know that. I shot experts because I was insecure. But once we knew we had a story, then we found our voice with the film."

Q: You experienced bullying growing up. Have people from your past come forth at all?

A: "I left the town I grew up in during middle school and I've reconnected with a lot of those kids because of this film. Some that had been cruel, some that had not, and some that had been in the middle. Some have donated significantly toward making the film. I've also connected with other kids that were bullied who I grew up with. They've reached out and said, 'thank you.'"

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit)